-Good morning adventurers. -Good morning.
Today, we're gonna be exploring the area as we promised in our previous video
We're going to be heading to the town of Guatape and wait 'til you guys see this town properly
It is so colorful and so amazing. I can't wait to show it off to you guys.
-The most colorful city we've ever seen. -Yeah, it's crazy.
But before that, we are going to head to Piedra del Peñol, which is... -Yeah, la Piedra del Peñol.
Huge rock face that's kind of the center point of the whole area
you can see it from everywhere and it just kind of
Stands out all on its own and we're gonna tell you a bit more about the rock when we get there
But there's going to be a very long journey of many many stairs to get to the top of it
Oh gosh, 740 to be exact, yeah it's not gonna be fun.
We're just walking to the road right now
And there should be some buses and little colectivos that come by that'll take us over there for really cheap
Yeah so the plan is flag one of those down
Maybe get a big old Colombian breakfast. We haven't decided if we'll do that before after the stairs. We're very hungry, but stay tuned
We'll get food one way or another
We got one. He stopped for us, but we barely saw him come by
Now we're running to him
gracias
Well, we almost missed that one, but they're they're really good about even if you flag them down at the very last minute
They'll still stop way ahead of you. So I just had to run to it
So they have these colorful Jeeps ours though was white
So we just thought it was a normal person driving by and then as it was like halfway past, we're like "oh wait no!"
It ended up being two thousand pesos, which is like 75 cents, less than a dollar, it's great
We are at the base of the rock right now
And there's a bunch of restaurants around
and we just found one that had one of the local plates that we wanted to try
Our calentado has arrived and it looks
Very different from what I thought it was going to be. I mean most of the components are here
It has the eggs the rice and beans the arepa but this one has a huge hunk of cheese
I saw it with avocado and a big sausage on there. I'm not too upset though. It still looks pretty amazing
So we have the beans and rice under there. It looks like it's stewed and gonna be really tasty.
It's nice and steamy
Yeah, I could smell it when they started making it back in there
He also brought us these huge bowls of just chocolate and milk. I guess it's like hot chocolate, yeah chocolate and hot chocolate milk.
But I did read that it usually is accompanied with this. So I'm so glad this is so cool. This smells delicious.
-Try it. -Okay.
Oh
The milk here is so good. It's almost like butter. It tastes like buttery chocolate milk. It's so amazing.
Oh my gosh.
Just what we need before our hike up the rock.
Yeah, this the fuel we need, right?
(Milk was a bad choice) It doesn't seem very foldable
I don't know if you're supposed to make your own like taco out of it? Maybe instead
Let's craft the perfect bite on the end here?
You think you're supposed to break it apart?
Maybe that's actually a better idea. Oh, yeah, there we go. Got a little bit of everything on there. Everything is nice and piping hot
It actually just tastes like refried beans with eggs
And then the queso on there the arepa is just cornmeal. So it's, it's pretty nice. It's really subtle. It's salty
I'm glad we got the salsa to go with it. Avocado would have been great and some chorizo or something like that
I don't know if we said but they didn't have avocado
Yeah they didn't have avocado but
This is pretty great it's gonna be super duper filling
So the stairs that we have to climb the entrance to them is about 15 minutes away from where we were eating
breakfast where we were dropped off but uh so you can take a tuk tuk up there
for I think we're only feeding like a couple bucks. Just pretty good. You can walk
There's a bunch of people down there walking, but we decided we have a lot of stairs to climb. So we're gonna do with the
Theoretically easier way although it's pretty bumpy ride
Y'all, this thing is massive. We have been seeing it. You can't miss it anywhere you drive around in this area
You see this rock, but I guess it's always so far away that it's you're like "Oh, it's not that big." Oh, no, it's huge. Yeah
It's just like a building in front of you
Yeah, but we are almost to the stairs and our journey is about to begin
First things first. We got to get tickets
There are 18,000 a piece which is like five or six bucks something like that
This might actually be the prettiest tickets we've ever gotten and they're I think they're on recycled paper
Pretty cool.
Alright to the top we go.
I'm actually just stalling
I'm a little nervous
-Bueno. -Gracias.
Our climb has begun we're taking it nice and slow over here. They actually have the
markers to show you how many steps you've gone for it. 100 we have a lot more to go but
we've heard that it can get really crowded on these steps
you can see they're pretty narrow, but we came in the middle of the week and
we're here at about 10 a.m. so I think that's the key because check out this parking lot way over there
I think that entire thing gets full and right now there's hardly anyone in there
So we pretty much feel like we have it all to ourselves
But check out this view, is this insane? The view is already incredible!
Already a hundred stairs up and look at this.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's great
We're almost halfway there and they have this little I think it's Mary statue and then this little lookout and what a lookout it is
This is amazing. You can see so much of the reservoir up here and the color of the water is so pretty
It's this nice green. It's pretty much the perfect day too, it's a little overcast and breezy
Ooh if it were any warmer though, we'd be... we die.
Oh my god. We made it.
That was hard.
I think there's still one final push. But ya'll, you get up to this platform. It's like a party starts.
They're selling micheladas. They got music on.
Yeah, it's crazy.
There's a
lovely breeze though
That last push was hard.
It's not super crowded up here, which is great. But I imagine this can get real crowded
This is the top
But then there's a little bit of a tower that they built to get you a little bit higher
So we'll have to go up that in just a bit
Feelin' the burn.
-Guys, we made it to the tippy-top. -We did it.
The view isn't really all that great so,
probably not worth coming up here
better from the ground, I would save your money
Dude, I honestly didn't think would be so amazing cuz I've seen this 20 times from the drone
Yeah, as I would say, we were flying the drone for the past couple of days
It looks amazing, but seeing it with your own eyes in here, it's so cool
So this valley did not always look like this, this is actually a man-made reservoir
It's the Guatape Peñol reservoir
It was created in the late
1970s and they put in a dam to generate hydroelectric power and it generates a huge portion of the power for all of Columbia.
-I believe it's around 20%? -Yeah, something like that.
This rock it sits in between those two towns Guatape and Penol and so well
it's I think maybe more common to call it La Piedra Del Peñol, which is the stone of Peñol.
I guess there's kind of a feud over whose rock it is?
Yeah, whether it's Guatape's or Peñol's.
Yeah, so back in the day
I guess Guatape was like
Well, we'll show you so they came out here
some people from the town and they were like
We're gonna paint Guatape on the side of this rock
So they got the G and they were starting on the U and then the town of El Peñol was like "Heck no,"
"we're not having that." So they all came out and forced 'em to stop. So now there's just a big old G.I. on the side of this rock
And now you know why, and now we know why coz we looked it up
We kept seeing it, I was like, "That's not Guatape?"
I don't know what town around here would be G.I.
Yup, now you know.
We came, we saw, we conquered the stony rock of Guatape Peñol
and now we are off to the town of Guatape.
The beautiful little town for some much-needed coffee. Let's go.
Welcome to the colorful city of Guatape.
This town is just too adorable
You guys there's so many colorful facades everywhere
Yeah and so many flowers, beautiful flowers, and then of course all the kitties and puppies. Oh my gosh. Yeah
We've just been walking around for like an hour. Just looking at it all it's very cool
This is the town square of Guatape.
From here you can see all sorts of different colorful buildings
It's surrounded by restaurants. And of course the focal point of the town square is this church behind us, which is absolutely incredible
It's super simple, but really stunning with the red and the white. It's really striking
It's really interesting that it's so subdued because the rest of the city is so colorful
That it actually makes it stand out more I'd say also this Square is completely surrounded by all these little stalls
I think that they have markets here maybe on the weekend
I guess if you want to have a relaxed drive here, come during the week
We're here around a Wednesday and there's part of the anybody here. But if you want more hustle and bustle, maybe come on the weekend
So the main thing that Guatape is known for are these
colorful paintings on the bottom of the houses which are called Zocalos or sockets? Not sure how that came to be
I think it kind of translates to sockets
Yeah rumor has it or so we were told that the bottom of houses used to have
Straw and chickens would peck through it and to keep the chickens from pecking through they started painting it and everyone started doing different colors
Then it evolved into these more ornate drawings and I was reading that they either have something to do with the family or with
religion or the surrounding area just something important to the people living in the homes and they are all over
every house pretty much in the city, which is absolutely unique and beautiful.
It is lunchtime and we have decided to keep it really traditional, really local, really Colombian with this dish called pizza
Just kidding obviously we went the opposite of Colombia
but there is supposed to be this pizza place in town called Luigi's that everyone has been raving about and
We wanted to go there but it turns out it doesn't open until this evening and we can't really stay
that late in the city, so we found this it's actually a crepe restaurant a savory and sweet crepes
It's called Guatacrepe
-Yes -Instead of Guatape get it?
They had pizza on the menu
And since we were in the mood for it, we're like let's try it.
So we're having... I guess..
-They're 'vegeteriano' -Yeah
It looks great though, and they said everything is made in-house.
All their breads, all their pizzas. Everything.
So it's pretty cool.
It looks like we've got a sauce,
Some zucchini, some yellow squash or something like that? And then some onions and mushrooms, as well as some cheese, sprinkled on top.
Oh man.
It looks pretty good.
It looks great, I'm very excited
We are going to devour our lunch and then I think we're going to head back to our Airbnb to do a little chili
-Ya'll, we are back at our Airbnb and you guessed it they have the sickest hot tub in the world. -Oh my gosh.
-Can you believe this? -Yes, this is not just a pool
This is a hot tub. It is being heated as we speak, it is magnificent.
-Lighting and everything, it's amazing! -It's an infinity pool out until the reservoir
We have some storms a-brewin off in the distance. Y'all I'm really gonna miss this area. This has been one of the
coolest places I think we have ever been in our travels.
Yeah, we keep saying it's like a little paradise in Colombia, which I never would have guessed something like this existed here
It's just not how I pictured it in my mind. No, really cool place.
Up in the mountains here
It's just so pretty
As you guys have seen there's some insane accommodations
This place we're staying that here is so cool
the people that run it are amazing to have all these little
Photos, awesome photo spots and they make you breakfast every morning. They have the coolest hot tub in the world
Yeah, they have all sort of like a whole soccer field back there. They have all kinds of fun stuff, paddle boarding, kayaking
It's great.
I think that's going to conclude our video for today
We're going to crack open a bottle of wine
we have there off-camera
and then we're going to chill but I hope you guys enjoyed chillin' with us in the Guatape area.
We're gonna be heading to Cartagena in our next video
We'll probably won't film tomorrow because
It'll be the exact same bus ride back to Medellin that we took out to Guatape.
Goodnight adventurers
We'll see you on the road.