I had the misfortune of visiting this little Colombian town back in February for a couple of days, I wasn`t even going to do a write up on it but I figured what the hell, if I can prevent at least one person from going there, I`ve done this forum a service.
About San Cipriano: Its an isolated, small town of about 500 near the Pacific city of Buenaventura. The population is made up entirely of Afro-Colombians and it is mainly a week end tourist destination for Colombians from the surrounding areas (Cali, Buenaventura, etc). Unemployment in high and apparently many subsist off of illegal gold panning in the area.
There is a nice river running along the town where you can go tubing, there`s also some decent hiking a couple of nice waterfalls but the locals warned us not to go too far into the bush because of Jaguars.
Why I went: I was about 10 days into my 2 week trip to Cali and decided that I`d like to spend a chill long weekend in a small town, around nature. I had other options such as Buga, Papayan, etc but this girl I was taking suggested San Cipriano, so we went.
Getting there: This is the interesting part. We take a 3.5 hour bus ride from Cali, the road towards the Pacific coast is quite rugged, the fauna and plant life is very lush and there is noticeably more military and police on the highway (the road from Cali to Buenaventura has been blocked off in the past by paramilitary groups and FARC).
Then the bus stops in what appears to be the middle of nowhere and drops us off. We look around and a guy appears and tells us to walk with him. We walk down the hill to the town of Cordoba and there`s an old abandoned railway track, this is how we would get to San Cipriano. The only transport there are these rigged up motorbikes with what looks like a wooden pic-nic table attached to them, it was quite an experience, about a 20 minute ride over bridges with 4 other people on the table, check out this video to see what I`m talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns9IQu_S__0
So we were dropped off and it was dark, then we had to walk another 10 minutes through main street San Cipriano, which is full of run down buildings and animals running around. We found a hotel, there aren`t many options and they are all run down and shitty.
So I was there for 2 days, did a bit of hiking and swimming but mostly relaxing and chilling. There isn`t a lot to see here, its quite poor as you can see in the video. The thing that really surprised me were how unfriendly the people were, usually in all of the Colombian towns and cities I`ve been, the people have been really outgoing and nice, not so here, they were very introverted, wouldn`t engage in conversations, etc. They also over charged on almost everything. The only nice people were the little kids. I was even accused of stealing a bottle of water, that was the straw that broke the camel`s back, really.
The only highlight of the trip was getting tanked off this bottle of jungle moon shine that I picked up for 5000 pesos and catching frogs with a bunch of kids, there is no nightlife there to speak of.
So, as you can tell I wasn`t a big fan of the place and wouldn`t recommend it. I guess that`s just one of the things you`re going to experience while traveling, sometimes you just decide to go to a random place at the last minute and it just doesn`t work out, oh well, it was an experience to say the least.
About San Cipriano: Its an isolated, small town of about 500 near the Pacific city of Buenaventura. The population is made up entirely of Afro-Colombians and it is mainly a week end tourist destination for Colombians from the surrounding areas (Cali, Buenaventura, etc). Unemployment in high and apparently many subsist off of illegal gold panning in the area.
There is a nice river running along the town where you can go tubing, there`s also some decent hiking a couple of nice waterfalls but the locals warned us not to go too far into the bush because of Jaguars.
Why I went: I was about 10 days into my 2 week trip to Cali and decided that I`d like to spend a chill long weekend in a small town, around nature. I had other options such as Buga, Papayan, etc but this girl I was taking suggested San Cipriano, so we went.
Getting there: This is the interesting part. We take a 3.5 hour bus ride from Cali, the road towards the Pacific coast is quite rugged, the fauna and plant life is very lush and there is noticeably more military and police on the highway (the road from Cali to Buenaventura has been blocked off in the past by paramilitary groups and FARC).
Then the bus stops in what appears to be the middle of nowhere and drops us off. We look around and a guy appears and tells us to walk with him. We walk down the hill to the town of Cordoba and there`s an old abandoned railway track, this is how we would get to San Cipriano. The only transport there are these rigged up motorbikes with what looks like a wooden pic-nic table attached to them, it was quite an experience, about a 20 minute ride over bridges with 4 other people on the table, check out this video to see what I`m talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns9IQu_S__0
So we were dropped off and it was dark, then we had to walk another 10 minutes through main street San Cipriano, which is full of run down buildings and animals running around. We found a hotel, there aren`t many options and they are all run down and shitty.
So I was there for 2 days, did a bit of hiking and swimming but mostly relaxing and chilling. There isn`t a lot to see here, its quite poor as you can see in the video. The thing that really surprised me were how unfriendly the people were, usually in all of the Colombian towns and cities I`ve been, the people have been really outgoing and nice, not so here, they were very introverted, wouldn`t engage in conversations, etc. They also over charged on almost everything. The only nice people were the little kids. I was even accused of stealing a bottle of water, that was the straw that broke the camel`s back, really.
The only highlight of the trip was getting tanked off this bottle of jungle moon shine that I picked up for 5000 pesos and catching frogs with a bunch of kids, there is no nightlife there to speak of.
So, as you can tell I wasn`t a big fan of the place and wouldn`t recommend it. I guess that`s just one of the things you`re going to experience while traveling, sometimes you just decide to go to a random place at the last minute and it just doesn`t work out, oh well, it was an experience to say the least.
