Saboyá, Boyacá: A rare hotel-less Colombian town

@wwaycorrigan

[Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.]

It used to surprise me somewhat how even the most insignificant and sleepy Colombian towns had at least one hotel to host the occasional passer-by.

Saboyá: One could sleep in the church if it was open. 

I'd often wonder how the owners made money from the business. For one, for many of these small-town hoteliers, from my observations, renting rooms is simply a bit on the side or a hobby for retirees.

Sleepless in Saboyá

If they're lucky, a couple or so times a year they get the chance to cash in during festivals and holiday high seasons.

Whatever the case, after over ten years of visiting such small urban settings, particularly in the Andean region, I've now come to expect every one of them to have a hotel or some sort of tourist lodgings.

So, rocking up to the Boyacá town of Saboyá and discovering it is inn-less was quite the shock.

Having walked practically every street in a vain search, I called into the police station, figuring they'd know of some accommodation options.

'It had all the hallmarks of being a very quiet, peaceful night's sleep in the countryside. A number of mosquitoes ruined all that.'

The first thing one officer said to me was that there were plenty of hotels in nearby Chiquinquirá, 11 kilometres to the south. Eh, excellent. But not exactly what I was looking for. My plan was to stay in the tranquil town, not to go back from whence I came. (My exploring of the far bigger Chiquinquirá with its many hotels and churches — it's dubbed the religious capital of Colombia — would come 24 hours later, but I had to pass through there to get to Saboyá.)

There are plenty of accommodation options in the nearby and much bigger Chiquinquirá. 

Thankfully, there was a solution. The police officer told me of a house about three kilometres outside the town that had rooms for nightly rent.

Wrong Way glamping

In fact, the main business of Alojamiento Rural Prados de Piedra Pintada is glamping. A couple can hire a dome for a, um, mere 275,000 pesos per night, breakfast and three hours of jacuzzi use included.

It was, as much as it might surprise the regular reader, a tad outside my budget for this particular mini-escape from Bogotá. I settled for a spacious ensuite room for 35,000 pesos, about 10,000 pesos more than I'm used to paying on such trips.

Alojamiento Rural Prados de Piedra Pintada: It could do with a jazzier name.

For one night, I felt it was worth it. It had, after all, the hallmarks of being a very quiet, peaceful night's sleep in the countryside, a chief reason I'd left Bogotá in the first instance.

That was until a number of mosquitoes at various intervals came buzzing around my ear, thus ensuring broken sleep. At just over 2,600 metres above sea level, it's surely close to the limit of the range for these winged warriors. Close but unfortunately not quite outside their combat zone. Oh well.

The hotel room I had in Chiquinquirá the following night was free of such pests. It was also, unfortunately, free of any natural light brightening up its four walls. Trade-offs, eh?

Glamping: You can look but you can't go in (unless you pay 275,000 pesos). 

Back to Saboyá, while it might be hotel-less, it's not without its friendly folk. (Incidentally and curiously enough, the names of two of the locals I befriended had an Arabic flavour to them; the affable yet unobtrusive tienda owner, Omar, and the farmer, Samir.)

Omar, on hearing my surprise at the dearth of accommodation in the town, is now thinking about making a few rooms available at his establishment for peso-pinching peripatetics like me. So he said anyway, although not quite in those words.

Thus, I'll have to return in a few months to see if he has come good on that idea. If so, I'll be in line for my cut of the profits.
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Zika-dee-doo-dah

A quick glance through the Colombian newspapers (Bogotá-centred ones, anyway) or sitting down to watch the main TV news here and it's unlikely you'll read or hear much, if anything, about Zika. 

Indeed, most Bogotá residents have probably forgotten what it is. (In case you need reminding, it's that mosquito-spread virus which can be particularly dangerous, it is believed, if contracted by pregnant women as it can lead to severe brain malformations in the foetus and other birth defects. Such complications, though, may not be as bad as first feared, going by the findings of a recent study.)

Sure it could be worse ... (Image from Facebook.)

After being in the headlines constantly at the end of December last year and early this year, it pretty much seems to have gone off the radar for Colombian media — save for that new, slightly more positive report, linked above, questioning Zika's adverse effects on the foetuses of late-term pregnancies.

From a personal (and male) point of view, the furore it had created, and seemingly still creates in many Western countries, had been and is a little over the top. 

For most relatively healthy human beings, those who aren't pregnant anyway, being struck down with Zika isn't a major deal. The symptoms are pretty mild by all accounts. There would appear to exist far worse infections for us to be concerned about.

Of course, that it hasn't been a topic of conversation or cause for worry in Bogotá isn't at all surprising. This is because the mosquitoes that transmit the disease aren't found in these parts due to the city's lofty altitude. 

Granted, you only need to travel a short distance outside Bogotá or go to most of Colombia's other major cities and towns to come into 'Zika range', something that a good number of the capital's residents do on a regular basis. (Alas, that hasn't been my case this year, but that has nothing to do with Zika fears; a trip outside the metropolis is badly needed.) 

Nonetheless, the pandemic isn't causing consternation among the masses. (For the record, as of April this year, there were 65,726 cases of Zika reported in Colombia.)

In fact, were it not for a phone call from a concerned older cousin in Europe who is considering visiting Colombia, Zika wouldn't have entered my mind. Apparently, all the advice he's getting is to be very careful if he visits here due to the disease. 

Again, it's fair to say there are greater worries — be they from man, beast or insect — than Zika for anybody coming to Central or South America.

Now, maybe there's a bit of that renowned laid-back Latino attitude at play in all of this. Perhaps all of us living here should be a little more concerned about Zika, especially so those planning to have children due to that fetal abnormality issue.

Yet, from the safe heights of Bogotá it's a case of, 'out of sight, out of mind'. No point worrying about something that can't get to you, really. Now as for Colombia's dragged-out peace process, that's another story.
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