Guatapé

We were picked up a little earlier as announced and had some time to sleep more on the way to our first stop, a restaurant, for breakfast. It was a typical Colombian breakfast and very tasty! From there it was just a little drive to a little bit unimpressive town that was "replicated" because the original one got flooded when a dam was built on the lake Embalse de Peñon. The electricity produced by the dam powers 30% of Colombia ⚡💡 They had rebuilt the church in a small scale overlooking the lake, so the location was great but besides the church there were just tourist shops 🤷‍♂️

Next up we boarded a pontoon boat for a 45 minute ride on the lake which had great views. Part of the tour was also a villa built by Pablo Escobar and of James Rodriguez (and his ex wife 😅). There is a cross on the lake to commemorate the place where the original church had stood. We enjoyed the boat ride, the pontoon boat drove really calm and smooth so no problem with sea sickness 🙂
Afterwards we got back on the bus for a short ride to the town of Guatapé where we spent some time exploring the lovely, colourful buildings 🥰 They are in a specific style called zocalo with tiles on each building, they are unique for Guatapé. The town was a bit of a surprise for us as we hadn't heard or seen anything yet about it.

Because for the last stop we went to the main purpose why we went on this tour, the El Peñón de Guatapé. A popular tourist destination and I've already seen it several times in travel blogs or Instagram. It's a huge rock overlooking the lake and its little islands. It looked quite tough to climb but it was just a little stair walking (702) to the top and we made it in about 12 minutes. It would've been even less if the people in front walked faster 😁 The view from the top was absolutely amazing and the pictures fail to capture the beauty of this place... After spending some time at the top we went back down and had a beer while we waited for the sun to disappear behind the clouds to take some pictures from below.

The two hour bus ride back to Medellín we spent mostly sleeping. Then we had a bit time at the hostel to plan before we headed to the terminal to board the bus to Salento, a 8 hour drive south. The bus was completely booked so we were glad to have our seats at the front with a little more leg space. We had contacted our hostel in Salento that we're supposed to arrive at 04:30 and asked if they let us store the luggage.Read more