Long weekend in Yopal

Yesterday we came back from spending three days in Yopal, it's my fourth time all in all going there. Apparently it's "winter" there now, this means it's still warm but it rains more than normal. We realised this when we came out of the plane and the rain was pouring down, not that it mattered since it still was quite humid and warm. Mateo's parents had already arrived the day before so together with them Betty and I went to the family's ranch/finca. I still don't know a good translation for this but finca is probably the closest one. Good thing for us the weather was better out at the finca; one reason is because you drive away from Yopal which is located just next to the mountains.

Day 1. We decided to go and ride horses while "helping" feed the cows, not that we really helped in any other way but supervising the cows, but it made us feel important. It's such a nice feeling when you are out on the horse and there is nothing but green fields around you, even the smell of cows makes you smile, you really forget that you were in noisy Bogotá just a few hours earlier. Mateo's dad wanted to measure some stuff on the field so he told us to wait inside the paddock for someone to open the fence for us. We did what we were told and we waited inside, sitting on the horses and doing some small laps around the paddock for almost an hour.. In the end we were not sure if we had understood what we were supposed to do and we got a bit restless so we decided to be real cow girls: I got down from the horse and gave my horse to Betty so I could open the fence for us, then we both passed and I closed the fence again (so the cows wouldn't get out). Wow - we felt so proud and amazing afterwards, really, for like five minutes, then we felt a bit stupid.. For what it's worth we had a blast inside the paddock talking about a lot of important and less important stuff. That was our adventure for the day ;) In the evening we went to have dinner at a restaurant while waiting for Mateo and his sister to arrive. During these kind of working days you are doing so much physical work and you are concentrating all the time so by 9 pm you just want to sleep, which we usually do..

Day 2. This morning we all woke up at 6 am to head out to the farm. It still takes a long time to actually get there even though we woke up at 6, we all have to get ready, go and have a large breakfast since we won't eat for the next 8-9 hours, and then finally drive out there which takes around 45 minutes. It was nice weather, not too hot thanks to the clouds but still warm enough to wear short sleeves. Almost all of us went out to the jungle. Two of us on a horse and the rest in a jeep. When we came to a really muddy road we left the car and continued walking. It was an experience to walk in that mud without falling down and without getting dirty. On the road we found a dead monkey who had just a few minutes earlier fallen down, poor guy had probably broke his neck in the hit. He was so beautiful and his fur so soft, I felt so bad for him.. I have never seen one of these monkeys before in the finca, maybe even never.

Day 3. This day we really were put to work. Mateo's dad joked that we had to work a bit to be rewarded to ride the horses. Our assignment for the day was to plant 24 trees, matarraton. It sounds easy but when the trees are 4 meters each and the place you want to plant them are 15 minutes away with tractor through the fields it is much harder. We all went on the tractor and I got to drive it, yes me, and I must say I am a very good driver :) We all drove the tractor in turns and we all helped, it's quite nice with this kind of work when you are all doing it together. We did experience one small accident, when the tractor drove over one of the electric fences and one of the strings got stuck in the tractor and broke, it hit two of us who got an electric chock and were thrown away a meter or two, nothing too bad but still something I haven't seen before. Mateo's dad got hit by the broken string, but nothing too bad happened, we were all lucky I guess. In the end we were too tired to ride the horses so we were left without our reward..