When you live in Medellin you actually have plenty of options to spend your weekend other than going crazy in Lleras Park or any of the other nightlife venues the city offers during its busy weekends. Having spent half the weekend doing the latter, i opted to visit Guatape instead. What a great trip it would be!
The journey to Guatape usually takes about 2h with buses from Medellin’s north terminal (COP13,500) and depart every 15min. While heavy traffic slowed us down the journey went by quickly as I was joined by Claudia for the trip and we weren’t short of topics to talk about.
Our first stop was El Penol well before the actual town of Guatape, as we stopped in to climb up the Guatape rock (well, right after a good paisa lunch with a view). The granite rock stands out in the scenery at 650ft and requires the visitor to climb some 700 stairs to reach the top. Takes a little effort, but is well worth it as the effort is rewarded with stunning views from the top across the reservior with its hilly landscape and my little islands.
How did this landscape come about? There wasn’t always a lake in Guatape/El Penol. Only in the late 1970’s a dam was built to store water for the summer month. the city of el Penol actually fell victim to this decision and was completely submerged. A model city has been build and a large white cross on the lake marks the locatiuon of the now flooded church.
By the time we climbed down from the rock the sun had set (sadly without a nice red colour as clouds were in the way), but the hotel (Hotel Zocalo Campestre) was thankfull right nearby. While some 2.5km outside Guatape town, the location is beautiful and boasts views of the rock as well as the lake. Great to wake up to in the morning and enjoy the view over a colombian breakfast.
Guatape city can be easily reached with one of the motos – essentially moped powered taxis for two guests. Fun gratis! We went to Luigi’s pizzeria (great pizza & fantastic athmosphere) before strolling about town. The place is pretty tranquile, the houses full of colours and it feels really safe everywhere. There was even a few openair movies shown by local artists with the main one being ‘Taxi‘. My Spanish, unfortunately, wasn’t quite up to the challenge yet though I definately got the gist of it (the fact that Claudia’s english is also very good made for little training). Next time!
On Monday we took it pretty slow and did a little more city exploring in daylight including the local mueseum. There was another performance on at the mini-amphitheatre – this time two musicians from Brasil that are touring south america. Great to listen to. After a well earned lunch, we got on one of the boat trips on the lake (COP15,000), which took some 1.5h return from memory.
You can take in the scenary a bit more close up and admire the villas of Colombia’s rich & famous such as football James Rodriguez. The main attraction on the tour though is a huge finca of the late Pablo Escobar. He built it for his daughter, visited it 3 times before it was bombed with 200kg of dynamite. Quite impressive construction that goes some way to show how much money the cocaine trade produced for him (estimates suggest USD60m+ per day for the Medellin cartel).
… and so quickly was the long weekend over… just a few more snacks from the street vendors … and back to Medellin!
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