Santander

The scale is difficult to register from the rim because there is nothing familiar in it to give the eye a reference — the river at the bottom looks like a thread and the far side looks close until you start driving to it. It is arid, ochre and grey, cut into folded rock, with the vegetation thinning as the walls drop. The cable car is the efficient answer: it leaves one rim, descends steadily to cross the river, and climbs to the opposite side, taking long enough that the sense of depth arrives properly on the way down rather than at either end. There is a park at the top rim with the usual attractions built around it, which is agreeable enough and not the reason to come. Driving the road that traverses the canyon is the alternative and is spectacular in a more nerve-testing way — a long descent in switchbacks, a bridge at the bottom, and an equally long climb out.

San Gil's reputation is not marketing, it is terrain. The rivers draining this country run fast and steep through the canyon system, which gives reliable whitewater across a range of grades — gentle enough for a first descent on one river, genuinely demanding on another — and the season is long because the flow is fed year-round rather than by a single wet period. The canyon rim generates thermals and provides the drop for paragliding, with flights running out over the gorge and landings on the plateau. The limestone underneath is riddled with caves, some walked, some requiring swimming through sections in the dark. And the same water that cuts the rock produces a series of falls and natural pools within easy reach of the town. What makes the place work is concentration: a small, unglamorous town where all of this is arranged from the main square, cheaply, in a day or two.

Barichara is built of rammed earth — walls formed by compacting damp soil between timber shutters — which gives them their thickness, their pale gold colour and the slightly soft edges that stone never has. The streets are laid in cut stone, the church is heavy and plain, and the town sits on a shelf with the land dropping away on one side, so several streets end in a view rather than a junction. It is very quiet, has been protected from development for decades, and is the sort of place where an afternoon disappears without anything happening. From the edge of town an old stone-laid path descends to a small village a couple of hours below — a restored section of a road system that once connected this country before the modern highways, walked now for its own sake. Go downhill, in the morning, and take water; there is transport back up from the bottom.

Santander eats hormigas culonas — large-bottomed ants, harvested in a short season after the rains around April and May, toasted in salt and eaten whole by the handful like nuts. The habit is old, predating anything colonial, and it is entirely genuine rather than a novelty put on for visitors: they are sold in markets and on roadsides across the department in season, they are expensive, and they are given as a gift at weddings. They taste nutty and faintly smoky with a texture like a very dry crisp, and the difficulty for most visitors is entirely psychological rather than gustatory. Out of season you will not find them fresh, which is worth knowing before you plan around it. The broader point about how far Colombia's regional cuisines diverge from one another is covered on the food guide.