GUATAPÉ - Climbing 'The Rock' in Colombia's Most Beautiful Town

Good morning and welcome back to Colombia. We are in Guatapé and just about to climb this rock. It's a very famous place here in Colombia. You may have seen photos of it before and actually everyone says it's Guatapé but Guatapé is the town and this is Pino de Guatapé, which is actually the rock. We have done a day tour out from Medellín. It took about two hours to get here on a big group bus and now we're going to start the climb. It's 20,000 pesos, about four pound five dollars, to climb up and it should only take about half an hour but the cool thing is going to be the view from the top of the rock. Let's go! Listo! I mean this is the view from down here so I imagine it's going to be better up top. Actually this is all man-made. It's a man-made reservoir that was built in around the 60s or the 70s I believe and there used to be a town there but the citizens all got relocated. They destroyed the town to build this big reservoir for energy and I think a lot of the citizens still aren't happy about that because they didn't get the traditional town destroyed and weren't too happy with the new one but in its place there is now this beautiful reservoir. As with everywhere there's a bit of history but now it has become a big tourist spot. Interestingly this used to be nothing. This is all agricultural farming land and this rock used to be a bit of a difficulty for the farmers because they'd have to just get around it and they can't really do much with the land until a couple guys decided to turn it into a tourist attraction and they built these snaking stairs going up to the top of the rock and then said we're going to charge people to get up there and see the view. Everyone thought they were crazy but they were visionaries. It worked and now everyone comes here. It's the most visited place in Antequera. Right enough history let's go! Ready? Happy for waking up at 6am? Not quite so much. Okay here we go. Right so it's all open air and it's vaccination cards and masks to get in and then as soon as you're in you take your mask off and you walk up which makes a lot more sense but right it's 740 steps to the top, 220 meters, 2100 meters above sea level. Let's do this. Hey hike for breakfast. Are you feeling fit enough for this mission? No. I worked at Amazon for eight months and all of that's just gone instantly. I feel so unfit right now. Okay so this is the way up and it makes sense that there's another staircase going down. How are you doing Tory Robots? It's easy. It's a good way to wake up. So quite a lot of Colombia is at altitude even in Medellin it's 1500 meters. Bogota starts at 2500 meters so even though you know it's not massively difficult it is harder because of the altitude. 225, third of the way. Okay now I'm guessing we share the way up. Almost there. It looks like we see some light. Let's do a little group photo as well. It looks really cute. Justina thought we'd made it. I know. I was like yay this is it. One bit to go. All right. Huge success. Much wow. Good work. The first one. The highest of fives. And we made it. We're at the top. That really wasn't that bad. It's probably about 15-20 minutes to get to the top and I got a little bit of a sweat on but it's cool enough here anyway so that was pretty nice and check out this view. There's also a little cafe and bar for micheladas. The Colombian michelada. So I didn't bring my drone to the top because drones are technically not allowed here over crowds of people unless you have a proper license I think. But. Hola. Gracias. Okay so this is a mango michelada. So it's basically beer, mango and salt. Cheers. The first thing I will do is wipe away the salt. I don't know if this is like a sin but I do not want to. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Oh okay. The drinks are ready baby. Wi-Fi artists on tour. Cheers guys. All right let's try this. With some salt around the rim. It's kind of like a Colombian margarita. It's all right actually. It's quite refreshing. I wasn't sure what to make of it but it's actually quite nice. It's like a radler. Not too mangoey. Not too sweet. So it's good. Cheers man. We deserve that now. So they've got two ice creams on offer. We've got queso bocadillo which is cheese ice cream or mango bitch. That seemed to be the thing to do here. There's only really a couple stops for ice cream and micheladas. So the whole wi-fi artist team got a michelada and now we have to head back down. I think we've got to do the 700 steps back down the rock and then we're heading to Guatape the town. Let's go. This is all part of the wi-fi artist service. Massage for everyone. Good. Very relaxing. We're now entering the town of Guatape and we've got a walking tour here. So far it's all these colorful little streets. It reminds me, it's like very typical of the small Colombian towns here. It also reminds me of the little pueblos of Mexico. The purpose of a zocalo was to protect the walls from humidity, dirtiness and some animals because at the beginning the walls were made of wood and they ate the walls but now the material is different. It's concrete and now the purpose of a zocalo is just decoration because zocalos are the identity of the town. Every time you see geometric or pre-hispanic figures we're talking about generic zocalos because they have like different categories. So we can find generic zocalos, we can find the commercial zocalos like the one in the corner that's a bakery. So they just build their zocalo about their business, I mean the bakers, the pieces of bread. We can find cultural zocalos like that one we're going to see in some minutes. Okay so we were just learning about the zocalos. This one has I love you in every language. French, Spanish, I love you, Italian, German and Dutch. I don't know. Wow this is a really beautiful little town. You've got colours everywhere and walking streets. We're only here for a little walking tour and then lunch but you could completely come here, I don't know, spend a couple days here and then make your own way up to the rock because this is really pretty and I bet there's a few things to see here too. Is she Kayla? Kayla Navas. The other reason why this street is so important is because in the past this was the first street with zocalos and colours. So the only beautiful place from pictures in the past, this street, the only attraction. Just this one. So you visit it, what's the fun? You walk around the town, all these streets and the only one, the only beautiful street, this one. And now they have the traditional umbrella street. Okay honestly if you travel a lot you've seen umbrella streets all around the world. This one's pretty cool because it also mixes in with the rest of all the colourful buildings all around. Yeah really pretty town. We just came down to the water and you can see the Disney's cruise or the Magic Disney cruise which I'm told is definitely not authentic. So if Disney are watching this I'm sorry guys I just found it funny. Just like anywhere I make little perrito friends. Yeah he almost he almost just walked straight past. Okay he just went for a swim and now he's like watch out. Sick dude. Now I'm just waiting for him to shake out on someone. Okay lunchtime. He's still trying. You're literally five months in the way. You're playing the wrong game. Lemonade's the start, the whole group. That's the shot. Just showing you the camera. Check this out we've got local fish here. Lunch finished and now we have the perfect after lunch activity. We're going out on a boat. Love getting on boats and I don't know I feel like I've been doing a lot of it but this is kind of the place to do it. Get out onto the reservoir. I think we've just got a private boat for all of us and we're gonna get some nice scenery. Hi baby. I think the dog just found us again. We missed you. We missed your meal. The nice thing was he wasn't even trying to get lunch from us. He came back after lunch. Oh that's my water bottle sir. That's not a toy. I need that. All right it's yours now. What are you doing there? Go get it. Go fetch. Okay we are on, getting on the boat. We made it on the boat and look who else did. Not my first rodeo. Oh sorry mate. Oh he's got worried now. No I think he's fine. He'll get used to it. How did this happen again? Yeah right. Sorry mate you'll figure it out one day. We're on a boat with um Dwayne Johnson up there in the distance. Turns away in disgust. Like everything in Colombia, it's turning into a bit of a party. Okay we made it off and you'll be pleased to know I am now back in Medellin and that was a great day trip. Honestly I'd recommend anyone that comes here to do Guatapé as a day trip and also if you wanted to I think you could also stay there for an extra day or like stay there for the weekend because it looked like there was loads of really nice accommodation there on the lake and apparently it's also a bit of a party city or party town that people go to from Medellin for the weekend. So yeah really cool. Definitely would recommend if you're coming to Colombia. Another great trip with the Wi-Fi Artists. Again check them out if you're interested and for now I'll just say again thank you for watching and see you in the next video.