Usually, in Bucaramanga, you eat the arepa plain with your breakfast or lunch. In Ocaña, though, they stuff their arepas with melted cheese! It was just heavenly.
In Ocaña, it is very popular to listen to Vallenato, or music from the valley. The drive to Ocaña was five hours from Bucaramanga, and Anita's brother drove us. Guess what we listened to the whole way there? Vallenato! When we arrived, you could hear it in stores, restaurants and in people's homes-it is very popular here!
We hiked up to a holy sanctuary that is on a mountain in the forest in Ocaña. It is called "The Water of the Virgin" or "Virgin of Torcoroma." There, it is said that Mary blessed a family of lumberjacks who was looking for a prosperous tree. When we hiked up, there was mass happening, and many people were sitting around the sanctuary. We got to be blessed by the running holy water that flows out of a faucet and we got to touch the holy case that holds a piece of the wood from the tree that Mary gifted to the family. Although I am not religious, it felt very special to experience the holy water and approach the memorial of the story of the sanctuary.
This week during museum visits, I read a lot about the history of Ocaña. Before the early 1800s, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela were all one state called "Gran Colombia," which was led by a man named Simon Bolivar. Simon Bolivar had a famous meeting to discuss various constitutions of the state.
