El Peñól de Guatapé

We spend a lot of time in the ministry looking for English speaking extranjeros (foreigners), and sometimes we forget that we are extranjeros too. Every week we try to have an extranjero day where we visit some museum or attraction around, or outside the city. This past week we took a 2 hour road trip to El Peñón (The Rock), and the town of Guatapé. It's possible to get there by bus, but a sister was nice enough to lend us her car for the day.

After 2 months, it felt good to drive again! And it's a manual transmission at that! Somehow I always get stuck driving....

Horse.

Almost there....

And we have arrived! There was just a small parking fee 4000 pesos, and 12000 pesos to get access to the steps. We were pretty much the only ones there, but we did get to witness to several foreigners at the top!

 There are 740 steps to the top. Only the strong will make it

Here's the top of the rock, but we're not done yet. We still need to climb that little tower in the background. Still, this is a great place to have a beer, or eat some lunch since there are a couple restaurants up here. Ice cream is also a recommended option :-)

And here we are at the top! This is really an amazing view. The panoramic can only do so much. 

The glamour shot

This seemed like a Titanic moment....

Man cards are given to those who make it to the 740th step at the top of the tower. Look at the first picture of the rock, then at this one, then back at the picture of the rock. Need I say more?

Had to put this in for dramatic effect

So we ate some lunch, and drove a little ways to the town of Guatapé. It's a pretty cool old Spanish looking town surrounding a giant lake. This is kind of a dry season, so it the town was pretty quiet.

This is probably the reason why it was so quiet. When the lake is full, you can rent jet-ski's and explore the islands, do water sports, or zip-line. There are also a lot of nice little places to stay around here.

We love the architecture and the cozy little town feel that this town has.

The Panda (that's the model of the car) got us there and back with no problems!

Overall it was a pretty awesome day! We got a chance to see some of the natural sights of Colombia and get some fresh air. As a bonus, we all arrived home safely with sunburns.