Bucaramanga Part 1

After waiting an hour in terminal 2 in Bogota’s airport, my plane lands late in the gorgeous setting in the hills of Bucaramanga. I looked over the old rusting planes, well placed off the runway, as if they were being shown in a museum. I had finally arrived in Palo Negro Airport, home to Bucaramanga. Hoping my taxi is still around, I grabbed my luggage from the one and only carousel in the airport and ran outside.

So why Bucaramanga? Well last year when I was in Colombia, I meet some pretty girls from Bucaramanga, who told me how amazing the city was. The mentioned how clean the streets were and that it is worth visit. Another friend of mine also suggested I visit Bucaramanga, and that it had some amazing scenery around and fun things to do. With all this advice I bought my tickets and flew out explore.

My taxi driver was waiting outside of the airport holding a sign with my name it, we headed out to the taxi and headed off to Hostal Don Juan, placed just south of Bucaramanga in the suburb of Floridablanca.

Hostal Don Juan is a house with private rooms in Cañaraval, Floridabanca, a suburb of Bucaramanga. There is an amazing host named Jorge and Martha who speak really good english and are willing to help you out with the trip. The first night here I went ahead and stayed near Carañaval.

Across the street is a vegetarian restaurant, which I was dang lucky to have across the street from my place, as my previous trip to Colombia made it impossible for me to eat vegetarian. The restaurant was named Albahaca, where I enjoyed an amazing vegetarian pizza, that I got to choose all my toppings from. The pizza was great and I enjoyed every bit of it.

I made my way back across the street to Don Juan and sat down. I talked to another guest staying there from St. Cruixus who had a very interesting life. She was in Colombia for medical reasons. After learning a a lot about the woman I wandered across the street to Coffee Pub to have a Club Colombia. The place has a projector and plays a lot of American rock music. It was a good atmosphere.

After this I wandered the streets around to see what was here. There were a lot of bars and a lot of people doing things. I headed to the carrefour in the area and purchased some items for my trip and headed back to for some sleep for adventuring Bucaramanga the next day.

So what do you know of Bucaramanga? Would you have thought of a great vegetarian restaurant would be easy to find? Do you know any other great places to eat in Bucaramanga? Would love to hear from you.

Erick Redcloud

A partially blind Graphic Designer, Freelance Travel Photographer, Artist, Buddhist and Vegetarian who loves to travel. Erick loves traveling by being with the locals and going off the beaten path. He is the founder and owner of Pathlesstravels and loves inspiring others to follow their dreams, whether it is to travel or something completely different. He started Pathlesstravels to hone is photography skills and to meet amazing people, and to help a friend break into journalism. Check out his photography at his link.