Rubbernecking in Girón

By Rob Packer

While I was staying with Jimena’s family in Bucaramanga, we took an evening trip to Girón, a nearby town famous for its colonial centre. We arrived on a Saturday night, which is prime time for weddings in Colombia and drove through the crowded streets of the town looking for someone to park. Eventually we found a place on a square and parked there. As we pulled up we noticed we were parked next to a wedding limousine; Jimena shouted out “¡Esa no es buena señal” (That’s a bad sign!) and we looked to see the bride was sitting there waiting for the groom to turn up. We got out of the car to join the crowd of people on the other side of the square waiting to see the wedding, or rather, if the groom was going to turn up. After reminiscing about a similar scene in the Sex and the City film and about the experience of watching it in Hong Kong with yelps and gasps every time a new handbag was shown, the groom turned up, possibly in a colectivo—one drove past and suddenly the groom appeared out of nowhere. Everyone agreed that the bride was very pretty and we went for a walk around town.

Waiting for the wedding to get started. Tick tock!

The night-time streets of Girón.

The main church in Girón. We visited in early January when Christmas decorations seemed to be in every public space in Colombia.

Rubén goes flying

By Rob Packer

A few weeks ago that now feel like an eternity, I stayed with my friend Jimena in Bucaramanga. According to the street signs on the main roads into the city, Bucaramanga claims to be many things, such as the “epicentre of fashion” in Colombia, which was news to everyone in the car who thought Medellín was, and a “cosmopolitan and global regional city”. When I arrived in Bucaramanga though, my parents had told me that Bucaramanga was the Colombian capital of parapenting, although a quick Google of the sport brought up parapenting locations in Bucaramanga, Bogotá, Medellín, Villavicencio, in short, pretty much everywhere in the country. Wherever the Colombian centre of parapenting might be, it’s one of the things to do in Bucaramanga so we went up onto the hillside to one of the parapenting stations to take to the skies.

We arrived and I was struck by how quick it was: give you name, ID number, money and weight and you were up in the air within seconds (for super-light Jimena) or minutes (for heavier me). The girl taking my name misheard me and my name for the afternoon became Rubén. I actually enjoyed my new alias so much, especially once it was given a Santanderano spin to Rubencho, that I never told Germán, my parapenting guide, that it’s not really my name.

Jimena takes to the sky!

Getting ready for take-off.

La bandera. Pretty windy up the top.

Parapenting is the kind of activity that you want to say feels really scary. But being attached to a parachute and being guided over the landscape above Bucaramanga felt surprisingly pedestrian. There was part of it that felt like you were sitting in an armchair in the path of a ventilator and watching videos. On the other hand, the view is spectacular.

Take off. The view over Bucaramanga.

The view from above.

The question of what Bucaramanga is famous for seems to be something that concerns the town’s government a lot. If it’s not parapenting, it’s definitely not fashion and despite all the bilingual signs on Bucaramanga’s metrobus network, it’s not really a global regional city, what is it? I’d say it’s a relaxed city of spectacular sunsets with incredible people whose hospitality became more and more jaw-dropping with every day that I stayed in there.

Me with Rodrigo and Sasha, two of the people who made my stay in Bucaramanga so fantastic.

Hong Kong comes to Colombia!