04. January 2024

Day 9: Guatapé

Piedra del Peñol

After we saw the rock yesterday, today was the day to climb it. But climbing means doing the ~700 steps up the stairs and nothing fancy.

We decided to walk from our apartment in Guatapé to the base of the Piedra del Peñol instead of taking a taxi or Motorchiva (Tuk Tuk). This walk was roughly 2.5km and took us around 45 minutes.

After we paid the 25.000 COP (~5CHF) per Person, we were on our way to the top. We were at the base quite early, around 8 am, which was good. The stairs weren’t too crowded yet, so it only took us around 10. Minutes to reach the top.

From there, we had a spectacular view of the surrounding area, and the whole experience was a great way to start the day.

We walked back down and took a Motochiva back to Guatapé. We looked for a breakfast place there, which turned out harder than expected. The places were full, closed, or just simply not offering breakfast. We grabbed sweet bread from a small bakery to combat the coming hungriness.

After that, we managed to grab a spot in a place that was closed before (Montano), which served a fantastic breakfast.

After that, we jumped onto one of the boats and rode around the lake. The boat offered a chilling way to get some impression of the area around Guatapé.

We still had the urgency to move back on land after the boat, so we decided to try the local hiking. For me, hiking in countries like this always shows me how amazing we have it in Switzerland with our hiking network. There are no signs, no official maps, or anything here. So we gave some “trail” we saw on AllTrails a go, but after a while, we ran into a closed private road. So we called it a day and moved back to Guatapé.