Day 82

Medellín, Colombia

Getting out of bed was rough this morning. I barely slept last night. I’m ready to sleep on this bus on the ride to Guatape. I headed over to the park where the meeting place was. There were about 30 people on the tour. Me and Anastasia hopped on the bus and took a little nap. We all stopped for breakfast for a bit and then headed over to the large rock in the middle of town. I’m a little confused on what’s called what here but I think the town the rock is in is called El Penon. It’s the third largest rock in the world. Surrounding the rock is a huge reservoir that has the shape of a dragon.

This is the biggest reservoir in Colombia. 45 Years ago they decided to make the area into a reservoir and the original town of Guatape was underwater. This reservoir somehow produces 5% of energy for all of Colombia. I was sleeping on the bus ride when they were explaining all of it so I heard bits and pieces of it all! We got to the large rock and walked up 700 stairs to get to the top. We had a lovely view of the whole area from up there. The reservoir is huge and it looks like a lot of people have vacation homes here. Pablo Escobar had one here too.

We walked down from the rock and got back on the bus to go to a small town nearby. We walked around and I took a bunch of pictures, we got some lunch, ice cream, coffee and met a bunch of people. Then we went to another small town where they made a replica of the town center that was underwater. After that we went on a boat tour of a small part of the reservoir for about an hour. We took the boat directly over where the town was buried 30′ deep and there was a cross from the church still visible coming out of the water. We saw Pablo Escobar’s house which was destroyed by his enemies but it was still standing. I think someone bought it to fix it up eventually.

After the boat ride we got back on the bus and took a two hour nap on the way back to Medellin. It was nice to just be able to sleep for once on a ride and relax. This trip is taking a big turn and is changing quite a bit right now. It’s weird to not be exploring on the bike as much as I was before. I think I’m going to head to Ecuador in about a week. Jacki has never been to Ecuador before and we made plans to meet up there and explore it together for the short amount of time she will be able to go there with work. I’m going to take a quick ride to Quito, Ecuador and see her for a few days and then bounce around Ecuador for two weeks or maybe more if I really like it. Once I’m done there I’ll head back to Colombia and explore everything the south of it has to offer and then I’ll end up back in Medellin for a while. I think I will stick around in Colombia until late march or whenever the sublet leaves my apartment. I’ll be back by April at this point for work this summer it seems. So weird to be thinking about all of this. It’s not the way I thought this trip would end.