We climbed The Peak! (El Peñol)

The plans we make in our heads are always subject to reality. But being in another country where we don’t know exactly where we’re going or how things work . . . it’s an extra invitation for me to let go and just expect things not to go as expected. The weekend before last we made a reservation online to rent a car so we could visit a little town a couple of hours away. Neither getting to the car rental place nor renting the car went as expected, but we managed to get to Guatapé by mid-afternoon. A lot of people had the same idea we had, so we were bumper-to-bumper on winding mountain roads. We came around a corner, and there was El Peñol! There’s one way up to the base and down--a narrow ribbon of road for cars, donkeys (for rent), and giant buses.

It was 659 steps to the top. Joe and I thought we were going to die. We took lots of rests.

Taking a break a little over halfway up.

Hallelujah!

We made it! And what a reward. This lake system was created by a dam in the late 1970s.

Going down seemed so easy . . . until my leg muscles started fatiguing, and I thought they might just stop holding me up!

But we survived!

From there we drove into Guatapé to find our hotel. Only we didn’t have cell service, so we couldn’t look at the map. And when we did get service briefly a few times, the map kept sending us back to the rock! Dan remembered the map he’d seen when we made the reservation, so we kept following a road uphill as it became less and less of a road. The kids and I had to get out of the car to get through some stretches! I’m not going to try to recount it fully (including no road signs and no hotel sign), but it was a laugh-out-loud miracle when we pulled up to a place that turned out to be our lodging for the night. The view was . . . well, we weren’t in Kansas (well, Missouri) anymore.

(This was on the way back down. You'll have to picture it going uphill!)

The next morning we went back into town for breakfast and then wandered around.

Three-wheel taxi, Guatape-style!

Guatapé is known for the carved and painted zócalos that decorate the buildings.

We had expected on this day to go on a three-hour boat tour (Gilligan’s Island-style!) to a submerged town that was flooded when the dam was built. But a helpful man in the tourism office told us we could drive there in 20 minutes and see the cross sticking out of the water, marking where the church is. This option was free. And it was on our route back to Medellin. So.

Submerged town under there somewhere.

And a few random pictures from the road back to Medellín.

Outskirts of Medellin.