The Unknown Colombia - Adventures and Travels of El Indio Andino

Stressful times in Bogota  After spending a certain time in Bogota, I realize that the stressful life can take a toll on me. Though Bogota has all the modern amenities that I can ask for, it can be a bit heavy at times. Car rentals are easy in Bogota, hence a weekend escape travel is not hard. What is hard is to choose the place I want to visit. One such small town is Paipa. Driving straight up here can take up to 4 hours from Portal del Norte depending on the traffic.     Escape Travels I normally plan such trips for 2 days. Driving from Bogota early on saturday morning and returning by sunday night.  There are a lot of good hotels and hostels in Paipa. The times that I have visited here, I have stayed in Paipa and as well as other small towns nearby. That wanderlust in me always wants to visit as many towns as possible on my weekend. I call these trips as escape travels that break the routine once in a while.   Weekend Trips  My recomm...

When I first came to Colombia, the lady from payroll had a last name ‘Paipa’. When I first heard of Paipa , Boyacá , I was wondering why does this girl have a last name from a town? Then I found that it is the other way, the girl does not have the last name from a town, but the town has the name which is the last name from the girl. Highway to Paipa This is something common in Colombia, and we can find a lot of names of towns named after people. In Tamil Nadu, if a town or a neighourhood is after a person, it will usually have a Nagar (Gandhi Nagar), Ur (Thirumalpur), Pattinam (Chenna Pattinam) etc., However, in Colombia, they just name the states, towns and neighborhoods from the names of the people. So it is common to find such names – Paipa, Santander , Villavicencio , Nariño , Pereira , Restrepo , Bolívar etc. Some names in Colombia are really different when we hear it for the first time. There is one La Mesa in Cundinamarca, which means the table. There is one Purificac...