Guatape and El Pinol

07.11.23

Today we booked a day tour for the equivalent of €28 per person. It includes the trip to Guatapé and El Peñol,

A boat tour and lunch. We are excited.

The start is at 7 a.m. in El Poblado.

Melissa (Spanish) and Sergio (English) are our two guides. The bus gets full and we always start uphill, as our first destination is El Peñol at over 2,000 m in the Andes.

In between there is a breakfast break for coffee and empanadas. (For 50 cents each)

After about 2 hours of driving we reach the rock.

The Rock of El Peñol is a 220m high and 65 million year old granite near Guatapé.

the peak is 2,135 m above sea level.

Sergio tells us that a farmer who bought land here accidentally bought the rock. So the rock is privately owned and the farmer earns around $20,000 every day from visitors

Unfortunately we cannot climb the rock because some rocks fell last week and people were injured. But the rock is also gigantic from below.

The climb would take about 25 minutes, which is one

Viewed from below, it seems far too little.

The view over the reservoir

Located at an altitude of around 1880 m, you can also enjoy it from the foot of El Peñol.

In 1970 the region was greatly influenced by the creation of the reservoir.

The highly branched reservoir has a maximum length of 15 km. It is located at the headwaters of the Río Nare , a left tributary of the Río Magdalena . The storage capacity of the reservoir is given as 1,070 million cubic meters and a hydroelectric power plant generates electricity for the region.

Then we continue to the small town of Guatapé.

Guatapé impresses with its many colorful houses and the history behind them.

every house has a different color

What is special are the decorations on the lower part of the house facades. Here, reliefs and works of art are attached to the skirting boards (= zócalos).

These show a wide variety of stories and relate to flora, fauna and customs in Colombia and it's fun to walk through the colorful alleys.

The church “Parroquia Nuestra Señora Del Carmen” is worth seeing from the outside and inside.

We eat lunch in a restaurant with a view of the lake. The food is also completely ok for the price of the day tour. We can choose between trout, chicken or vegetarian.

After dinner we go on a boat and take a one-hour trip on the reservoir.

A gittarerro is also on board to sing funny songs. Songs 😂🤣 Back on land we explore Guatape with the

“Umbrella Alley”, Calle de Recuerdo and the other colorful alleys before heading back towards Medellin.

Our conclusion: the trip was really worth the money and the guides were able to tell us a lot about the area. Back in Medellin we take a taxi to our apartment. We've always been lucky, but this time the driver wants to cheat us and charges us twice as much as we used to pay for the trip. He didn't have a taximeter on and wants 20,000 pesos from us. But he did the math without the landlord. After we debated for ages, I gave him 10,000 pesos and told him that his behavior didn't reflect well on the taxi drivers in Medelin. Ok, that was one of the other taxi drivers we had. There are black sheep everywhere. All in all, we had a lovely day and ended it by the pool.