INSANE Adventure in the Rugged Colombian Jungle? - Van Life Colombia

The big deal about this hike is it's a six-hour round-trip hike, a six-hour round-trip hike, a six-hour hike, and it takes about 30 minutes to get there so it's like a seven-hour day. So that's pretty long. Now if you remember when I went to Acatenango I had other guys help me carry my pack up to the top because it was such a strenuous hike. I'm carrying my own gear on this one but I'm really looking forward to it. Everyone tells me this is the one of the best hikes in Colombia so I'm super stoked about it. I'm here in Jardin. I gotta go up to the tour place to book my guide to make a reservation for my guide to go on the hike and so that's where I'm headed right now. So I'll take you on a stroll through Jardin on the way there. So these jeeps right here collectivos and they are used like taxis or whatever but more of a public transportation and so they have benches in the back so people can ride and of course they're four by four so they can get up on all these difficult roads but you can see the people have come to town and bought like fertilizer or feed for their animals and it all gets loaded up on these jeeps and these jeeps these collectivos will take them home for these people. So after navigating this busy little town I've come to the place. Alright sounds like we were able to work it out. It's gonna be a hundred and sixty thousand pesos for one person. As a group it'd be a hundred thousand pesos. I think a lot of that has to do with splitting up the transportation so in any event it looks like the hikes to go tomorrow. Everybody in the van is excited this morning. We're all feeding off Kurt's energy. He's getting ready to leave to go on an epic hike. It's a good one guys and let me tell you even if my knee was in good shape this is one I would sit out so don't feel bad for me on this one at all but Kurt is taking you guys on an adventure. I'm all packed up ready to go. I got about a six or seven block walk to get to the place. It looks like the transportation up to this place is going to be so this ought to be a little interesting start to the ride. We just got dropped off by the tuk-tuk. I thought it was supposed to be a long ride. He said the transportation was supposed to be pretty expensive. I understood we were supposed to get transported all the way up to the top. That's not the case so it looks like I'm kind of getting a little different deal than I bargained for but we'll see what's up. So we started the hike at 815 so we're still walking up the road that we were supposed to get a jeep up so let's see how long they added to the hike. Alright guys if you listen you'll hear the orifandulas. You should see them flying around. So you can see off in the background the hills for the cow pastures and this is eucalyptus trees. Now I've been told a few times that the eucalyptus trees here are not native but it looks like there's some farmland up here. This is fields for Guadalupe which is similar to a passion fruit. We saw some of these on the crazy drive to get to Jardin. Okay we made it to the park entrance. We're still on this road but we made it up to a high enough elevation where we have a beautiful vista and you can see overlooking the jungle as well as the farmland and the mountains off in the distance and I can see up over the hill there's a lot more of those covered planting areas. Alright 30 minutes in guys it was 30 minutes up to where the jeep should have taken us and we're now to our first river crossing. Alright we came across some wild berries here. These are like blueberries or blackberries. Hmm she's going in. Because the weather up here they have a lot of beautiful flowers and up through here we just came through a field and they grow these flowers to sell them but this is actually common up in this area it's pretty cool and you can see how the trail the road is starting to wrap around through the farmland and down through and we're not climbing right now which is a beautiful thing so it's a nice easy beautiful walk. Alright we're coming through Finca and you can see it's just all these plants. See these flowers here? Apparently they're edible. They're beautiful flowers. So they don't have a lot of taste but they're kind of smooth they have a good texture I like them. So I don't know if this is a washout if they're making another road up here or what. You see how the mountain just slid away right there and then they're dumping more soil down here so again I don't know if it's to shore the road up to create some fill or maybe a road up to the top. You can see up here where there was a lot of deforestation where they came through and cut the trees. All this that we're on is private property and they're working on the road clearing more probably for more farmland and you can definitely see here where they've taken all the trees. Wow beautiful mirador and view down into the valley. So you can see here the wood they're taking it's not real big. They got a crew up here who's cleaning it up. So look at that little machine there it's carrying the limbs up. So this is a tractor and they've taken the wheel off and the wheel is a pulley and you can see they're running the cable up to this where they have a series of pulleys and that's how they use what they use to pull the trees up here where they ultimately work on them. Old Massey Ferguson haha wow. So after about one and a half hour walk look big old mushroom. So after about an hour and a half walk we find ourselves finally in the forest and we can hear the sounds of nature it's nice. All right the trail is definitely a muddy slippery mess down into here. You see there's steep drop-off right there and we're just working our way down. If you guys have been following you know I'm a downhiller so I'm enjoying this a little bit more and I have some of the other uphill walking but it's still kind of technical because it's slippery rocks so just kind of try to safely work our way down. You guys will be glad to know we have a guide and one of his friends along for the ride so should anything happen we got help. The thing about a hike like this is what goes down must go up and so right now we're scrambling down some of these places are pretty steep. The trail is pretty rugged in some cases doesn't almost doesn't exist. No way I could do this without a guide but we're still headed down as you find it. Oh man this. Wow. You want a bite? Alright. Can you eat it? Can I come eat it? Alright guys I think here's the first cascada. This is the reveal you'll probably see it before me because I got to look down to watch my footing here. There it is. Wow. A lot of spray. Look at that thing. Beautiful guys. Wow. Salto de Lange is the waterfall right here and you can see we just came along this rock face climb down it and yeah the river just drops right off the mountain. Beautiful cascada. I can't use my pocket because it's so wet. So my audio may not be good. But this right here is super steep and I think we're headed down to the other cascada. But this is not a loop trail. I repeat this is not a loop trail. So we have to climb back up there. And climbing up there is going to be even more difficult than coming down there. There's a point in time when you're just going on adrenaline through this swampy mess. You've kind of forgotten about getting water in your shoes and mud on your face. Because it's just going to happen. But we're still going trying to find these other six cascadas. And look over there. There's one. So I'm not as sure officially how many cascadas this is. Because here's this one right here. And right over here is another one. What a beautiful place here in the jungle. And I don't know if you can see it. I'm sure you can. But right in front of this is Oropondoola Nest. Just hanging down there. What a beautiful place to build your home, huh guys? And if you look down there, it's just like a hole in the ground. What a beautiful place. Alright, I don't know if you guys can see this. But I am standing directly above him. So we've got to scale. Go ahead. I've got to scale down this thing. It's about 20 feet to be honest with you. He's checking the ropes. It's good? So I'm going to let Isabel go first. Nice job Isabel! Alright. Alright, me next. Where do you go? Here? Yeah. Alright guys. We're sitting in a cave. Behind and underneath the big waterfall Grand Finale. In the jungle. What an incredibly difficult hike. Slippery, muddy, up and down, crazy steep slopes. But I've got to tell you, it was worth it. This is an amazing view. What a beautiful place. This is King Kong. If you can see on the left, the face, this is the spirit or soul of this beautiful cascada coming down through this little cavern right here. Absolutely stunning and amazing. Wow. After the adrenaline wears off, and it has, there's nothing left but determination. And the obstacles are more challenging now than they were on the way over. And it's starting to rain. When you get tired like I am, slipping is definitely more of a factor. It just takes so many muscles to maintain your balance through this whole trek. And as you can see, we're still bending and squatting and climbing and crawling. And this is just hard. And I'm beginning to wonder if it was worth it. So you can see up on the hill over there, they're still logging. And since we went in, the trees that we walked on in the road have been covered up. And the dump trucks are steady bringing material back, dirt back from that first spot we saw on the walk in. So they're making more roads so they can take out more trees. Alright, Alexander was a good guide. He got me there. As you guys can see, we're coming back down the hill on the road through the fields. We're almost back. Isabel's been a great help too. And just a fun time. We all had some laughs. And I didn't cry. So you guys should be proud of me for that because it was a very difficult hike. My feet hurt. My shoes are wet. I'm soggy. I'm ready to get back and get a shower and get cleaned up. Good news. Our jeep has arrived. So they've got us some new transportation. It's a jeep. And we don't have to walk all the way back down, which is good news. If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos. 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