We travelled from the Caribbean coast to El Cocuy National Park for trekking in January 2008 and then continued from El Cocuy to Villa de Leyva. There are no direct buses, you first have to go to Bucaramanga, then take another bus to Capitanejo and change there for Cocuy/ Guican.
Buses from Santa Marta to Bucaramanga are frequent; we took a night bus and had one day and one night in Bucaramanga. There is not much to see in Bucaramanga itself, but we made a trip to Giron, which was nice enough. From Bucaramanga, two companies (Cotran and Copetran) have buses to Capitanejo, which all leave between 4 and 8 am. We left on a Sunday and took the last bus at 6 am. On most days it would be possible to arrive in Bucaramanga by night bus and change immediately for Capitanejo. The bus was small but comfortable, but the road was unpaved for most of the ride. We arrived in Capitanejo after 2 pm and had to wait for the next (and last) bus to El Cocuy until 4 pm. On weekdays there may also be a later service. All the buses go first to El Cocuy and then continue to Guican. When we arrived in Cocuy at 7pm, all the shops and the park office were still open, so that we could register and get a badly photocopied map and some advice about the treks. There is a good choice of hospedajes in El Cocuy now; most of them have hot water. We stayed in Casa de Muñoz, conveniently located between the bus stations at the plaza, nice and comfortable with hot showers and luggage storage, for 30,000 to 40,000 pesos per double room (depending on season).
From Cocuy, the milk bus (lechero) does a round from 6am to the park entrance at Alto de la Cueva and then going on to Hacienda La Esperanza, Capilla, the Kanwara cabañas and to Guican (from where there are occasional buses back to Cocuy). The Hacienda La Esperanza as well as the Kanwara cabañas and a couple of other places in the area rent out rooms, guides and horses. We walked (without guide) from Alto de la Cueva to the Lagunillas and on the next day to the very beautiful Laguna de la Plaza. The staff in the park office had suggested going all the way to the Laguna de la Plaza in one day, which would be a long day, but possible. Coming from the coast we needed the first day to acclimatize. On the third day, we hiked the whole distance back, which was still demanding. The only way to get out of the park is again the lechero in the morning. With more time, the 7 or 8 day circuit around the mountain range would certainly be nice (and not more difficult). There are also a number of other trails in the park, enough to spend about 2 weeks without getting bored.
Apart from the bad photocopy, there was no decent map available in El Cocuy. The old LP Edition, as well as a somewhat newer footprint guide we found had fairly accurate maps of the area. Search the hostel shelves along the way.
Trekking in the park was wonderful. The trails have good markers at the crucial junctions and stone pyramids along the trail. There are many obvious campsites with fresh water, and the landscape is fantastic. We had pretty good weather, although it was very cold (during the night below freezing). The best months for trekking are December to February, and while there may be several dozen visitors per day in January, there are only a few people in February, once the Colombian holidays are over.
From Cocuy we took one of the Bogota buses as far as Tunja and changed there to Villa de Leyva. The buses for Bogota leave either around 4 or 5 am or at 5 pm and take about 12 hours.
If you have the choice it makes more sense to travel in the other direction, from Bogota to Cocuy and then possibly on to the coast, because this reduces the acclimatisation problem (Bogota is at 2600 m), and a Caribbean beach is the right place to recover from the cold…
More about our trek in the El Cocuy National Park on:
http://westwards.typepad.com/westwards/2008/02/taking-the-milk.html
Westwards from Japan
http://westwards.typepad.com
