#el penol

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The monolith El Peñol near Guatape

[kellykirbytravel]

Climbing Piedra del Peñol

Piedra del Peñol, El Peñón de Guatapé, or simply La Piedra. It translates to the Rock of Guatapé or the Stone of El Peñol. This 656 foot, 65 million year old rock is located in Guatapé, Antioquia, Colombia. 

We climbed the many stairs to the top (with a few breaks) and were not disappointed by the view! 

At the very top are viewing areas, souvenir shops, and a snack bar. We relaxed with a drink or two for awhile enjoying the view!

The journey back down was not nearly as difficult!

We are so glad we had the chance to climb one of the largest monoliths in the world and take in the magnificent views!

[2t2r]

Rocher de Guatapé : la Piedra del Peñol et ses plus de 700 marches

Nouvel article publié sur https://2tout2rien.fr/le-rocher-de-guatape/

Rocher de Guatapé : la Piedra del Peñol et ses plus de 700 marches

[2t2r]

Le rocher de Guatapé

Nouvel article publié sur https://www.2tout2rien.fr/le-rocher-de-guatape/

Le rocher de Guatapé

[vuvanhon]

Chìm tàu 4 tầng chở 150 người ở Colombia

Chìm tàu 4 tầng chở 150 người ở Colombia

Cảnh sát cho biết vụ chìm tàu khiến ít nhất 3 người chết và 30 người mất tích, theo AP. Nhà chức trách Colombia đang điều động không quân cùng lính cứu hỏa từ các thành phố lân cận tới hiện trường để tìm kiếm những người sống sót. “Điều quan trọng nhất lúc này là cứu người”, thị trưởng thành phố Medellin nói. Những đoạn video được đăng tải trên mạng xã hội cho thấy chiếc tàu mang tên El Almirante…

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[hundredbillionbottles]

The Great Big Tienda In The Sky

In last week’s entry, I wrote that my enthusiasm for Colombia was gone, it had been slowly dripping out of me as I got more accustomed to Bogotá life and more excited to see everyone back at home. However, I wrote that before I went to a Santa Fe game, an experience which essentially refilled my bucket to the brim. I thought I understood this country and knew what to expect from it, but I was in no way expecting the energy and all-out madness of a football match between one of Bogotá’s teams against a Bolivian side somewhat inappropriately named ‘The Strongest’ (that’s not me translating from Spanish; the team is literally called ‘The Strongest’), in La Copa Libertadores, which I assume is the South American equivalent of the Champions League.

Stephen and I arrived only twenty minutes before kick-off at El Campín, after the most delayed TransMilenio trip of our lives as Bogotanos, and were confronted with streets flooded with Santa Fe red which blurred in with the night time orange of the city. We thought surely there would be no tickets left, but then we were directed to a tiny booth cut out of the side of a caravan, in which resided a man selling the remaining seats. There was no queue; we just leisurely strolled up to it and got two tickets, before frantically sprinting amongst other rabid fans to the turnstiles as it became abundantly clear that the game had started. Once inside, we were swept up into absolute frenzy for the next hour and a half.

The stadium was packed and rocking, other than the away end housing little over thirty The Strongest fans who had made the trek from Bolivia. Behind our seats (which weren’t being used as seats, but rather standing platforms), a full brass band played constantly, dictating what the unrelenting crowd would chant next, and across the pitch the northern stand pulsated in time with the belting drum beat. The referee’s whistle could not be heard over the cauldron of noise, and any time a Bolivian player fell down injured they were pelted with coins. It was the most bizarre, chaotic, barbaric, all-round hilarious display of mass human behaviour I’ve ever seen in my life, and when Santa Fe scored the opening goal on 27 minutes the madness erupted into full-blown pandemonium. People forgot who they were, and for a moment transformed into baboons bouncing around the place with intense ferocity, like the way a tele screen judders when you pause a VHS. In total contrast, The Strongest’s deciding equaliser on 40 minutes stunned the place into total silence… for about fifteen seconds, then the standard hysteria resumed.

The enthusiasm of the Santa Fe faithful – the noise, the energy, the sprinting to the stadium, the enraged shouts ‘PUTA!” – really rubbed off an me immediately afterwards and for the days following, so now I had gone from fairly impartial about our Puente trip to Medellín to compellingly excited. We stayed in a hostel in El Poblado, a district, almost like a village, bursting with fantastic restaurants, countless bars and clubs and endless cafes. You could amble round it for hours, which is essentially exactly what we did for the most part. Nicknamed ‘The City of Eternal Spring’, the city exists at an altitude in the Andean region which permits it to remain in 24-26 degree sun all year round. So, in a heat that was strong, but pleasant, one that touches you on both sides of your face and fills you up with contentment, we strolled around, indulging in an inordinate amount of food and drink, occasionally taking a rest to ride the city’s perfectly functioning metro (the only one in Colombia) to some points of interest such as Plaza Botero and the stunningly beautiful botanical gardens.

Whilst the city, drenched in its golden sun all day long, illuminating all the wonderful pockets of culture to be found, is a shining testament to how far Colombia as a whole has come since the days so brutally and so exaggeratedly portrayed by Netflix’s ‘Narcos’, the definitive highlight of the trip was the excursion to Guatape, a site two hours outside Medellín. Guatape is a big rock. There is little point in sugarcoating it to be anything other than that; even all the tourism companies in Medellín advertise the trip with posters that just say ‘Big Rock!’. However, such is the bigness of this big rock, it is a breath-taking sight to behold. Waking from my doze in the front seat of the bus there, where I had to sit because I had a ticket for seat 27 and the bus only had 26 seats, I was confronted with the big rock out of nowhere. Bam. It was just there. Completely out of place in the otherwise flat landscape, just rising up out of the ground like a colossal thumbs-up to God.  Once we got to the base of it, in the thick of the vibrant market, alive in its distribution of the usual tat, I looked up and saw massiveness, a physical manifestation of the word ‘huge’.

We climbed over seven hundred steps to the summit which was buzzing with pointing tourists and sweating, frenetic empanada venders. The view from up there was an unforgettable sight; the area that surrounds the big rock is made up of an arsenal of small lakes, which when positioned as they are between islands of forest, are made to look like giant puddles which glisten and sparkle a deep turquoise in the reflection of the cloudless sky, filled only by the occasional wondering vulture or hawk. We looked on it, on this tremendous creation of nature or God, or a collaboration of the two, for a long time, before deciding to treat ourselves to the definitely human creations of beer and empanadas. Procuring those two items from one of the sweaty frenetics, we crowded round a small circular table like we did the first time we went to the tienda down the road from our house in Bogotá (before it shut down forever), and fought against the wind blowing our napkins all over the place. We talked about dumb stuff and laughed about dumber stuff, and kept going up to the counter to get severely dumb stuff to eat (i.e. a cheesecake flavoured ice cream that had a literally clump of frozen cheese in the centre like a cornetto sent by Satan). Eventually, we descended down the big rock, down from the great big tienda in the sky, and sat by the lake reading and waiting for our return bus. I was glowing inside with the bliss that comes from a nice day in the sun, from a new experience, and mostly from a plan actually being actualised.

I guess the thing about this country that I’ve been reminded of this past week is that it’s so diverse; no matter how much you see and do there’s still going to be surprises, there’s still going to be something you’ve missed, either hidden away in some remote part of the country, or in plain sight at the local football ground. And I won’t see it all in the next two weeks, I won’t even come close, but I’m alright with that because that means I can come back some years down the road with a totally different itinerary. This weekend Stephen, Ela and I are reattempting our trip to the Tatacoa Desert which fell through last month, this time with Ela’s visiting Dad Roy tagging along, so I guess that will be one place I won’t need to go when I return.  

[kakisamson]

Medellin, kota terbesar kedua di Kolombia, yang lebih dikenal sebagai kotanya Pablo Escobar dahulu dan juga kota paling innovatif sekarang i...

[sechaber]

El Peñol kayası ve dahası...

El Peñol kayası ve dahası…

Güney Amerika – Kolombiya’ da bulunan El Peñol kayasını daha önce duymuş muydunuz? El Peñol’u ziyaret edenler bu büyük kayanın devasa 10.000.000 ton taş olarak tarif edilebileceğini söylüyorlar… El Peñol’e tırmanlardan bu devasa kayayı biraz daha yakında tanıyalım: Bir grup maceracı insanın 1950’lerde 66 milyon tonluk bu dev kayanın bir kenarında bulunan yarıktan yukarı doğru tırmanışları ile…

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