Disconnect: Laguna del Otún

3 days, no shower nor mirror, 18km of distance, 2000m difference in altitude, 6 started the hike, 2 arrived at the top

Getting to this lake, which is located on an altitude of 3950m, takes you to your limits. Not only because of the distance and the inclination on that altitude, but also because the rocky path is really difficult to walk.
We wanted to start on Saturday early in the morning to be back in Pereira by Sunday night. The problem, though, was that Felipe's girlfriend Camila didn't have time before 10. Since the chivas, a very typical colombian vehicle for all types of ground, don't leave that often, we had to wait till 12 and started walking around 2pm.
I was sceptic about the idea to leave that late, because we would have had to walk in the darkness from the first campground La Pastora (6km, 3h) to the second one called El Jordan. The guys were optimistic and didn't see any problem, but were disabused by the owner of La Pastora, who affirmed my worries, telling them that it was impossible to continue at night. Consequently, we had to camp there, making it impossible to hike up and back down the next day.
Since not everyone could stay another day, we had to split the group: Felipe, Camila and Julian went down on Sunday and only visited the waterfalls that are close to La Pastora, while Pablo, Lucho and I continued the hike. Lucho had huge problems with the altitude, so in the end we had to leave him at Jordan, where he already prepared the tents to stay there at night. But still we lost a lot of time waiting for him on our way there. Despite the shortcut we took on the last part to the lagune, it took us another 4 hours, fighting against the exhaustion and our hurting muscles. Nevertheless, the landscapes, changing from rainforest to “normal“ forest and later to páramo, as well the view on the lake, was worth all that. It was incredibly cold, but equally beautiful.
We couldn't stay long, since it was almost 5 and there were only 1 1/2 hours of at least a little bit of light left. Even though we almost ran the way back, the last hour was of complete darkness. Our camping spot was awesome: in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't even light on the finca, but the view was amazing. We got up, while next to our tent a horse was looking for food,a few meters away a calf observed us and on the next mountain we could see a waterfallwaterfall.
Monday was even worse than the 11h marathon of the day before: we tried to take the 12 o'clock chiva to town, but going down that fast after 2 days of hiking and without breaks was like hell. We made it in 4h, but missed the chiva by 20 minutes. Finally on our way down, it was so full that many of the people had to ride on the roof of the chiva.Read more