Guatape – The Rock

Our last day in Medellin we took a two hour bus ride to the town of Guatape to visit “The Rock.”

Medellin

After a great time in Taganga, we took a flight from Santa Marta to Medellin. We originally planned on taking a bus, but it was over 20 hours and would cost $35 each. Instead, we found a cheap flight ($60 each) and it only took 50 minutes.

The first day in Medellin we decided to take the Metra rail and cable car lines to explore the city and orient ourselves to the city. Here are the views from the mountains:

A staple dish of Medellin and Colombia is Bandeja Paisa , which you see below. Dave finished all except the pork rind.

We visited the plaza at the Museo de Antioquia (didn’t go inside though) to see the works of Fernando Bortero, a figurative artist and sculptor from Medellín. His signature style, also known as “Boterismo”, depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume.

The following two pictures are of the Plaza de Cisneros which has a large artificial forest of 300 poles with a maximum height of 24 meters.

Just across the street is the Gobernacion de Antioquia building and in front of it is this amazing sculpture! The creator is Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt and it is called Monumento a la Raza.

Taganga

A laid back fishing village shaped like a horseshoe with a beach surrounded by beautiful mountains! Cheap diving! Cheap hostels! Cheap food! We added two more dives to list here in Taganga. Saw a ton of colorful fish and some beautiful coral. It was a very difficult dive as we had to swim through an extremely strong current (see Scuba Diving in Taganga). We stayed at the Pelikan hostal which was owned and operated by a local Colombian family. Also spent Christmas here. The locals celebrated with loud music, M80’s and lots of rum! We had a really nice dinner with about 30 other backpackers that the hostel prepared for us.

Christmas eve dinner.

And finally, a Christmas Eve walk through Taganga video

Tayrona National Park

On December 22nd (Dave’s birthday) we took off on a two day, one night hike to nearby Tayrona National Forrest. We took a 45 min bus from Santa Marta (left side of image) to El Zaino, which is the main park entrance. From here we took a short jeep ride up to Canaveral to the start of the hiking trail.

The two day hike (in yellow above) included a stop at a few of the beaches along the way. These beaches didn’t allow for swimming because of the dangerous waves, but it did provide for some amazing views!

After three hours of hiking the first day we arrived at Cabo San Juan beach where we had an overnight stay in hammocks. This was an amazing beach with massive boulders surrounding it that provided calmer waters to swim in.

The second day hike went from Cabo San Juan beach up steep rocks to a small village of Pueblito near the top of the hike (about 1 hour).

The next leg of the hike was from Pueblito to Calabazo (see map image above) and took just under two hours mainly down hill. Along this part of the hike we even heard and saw howler monkeys (see video below) and MANY ant crossings (video below).

Scuba Diving in Taganga

After the short bus ride from Santa Marta to Taganga we immediately found a diving center and signed up for a fun dive.
We did two dives that offered much more scenery than our previous dive in Bocas del Toro. The under water currents were much stronger as well and made it difficult at the end to get to our desired surfacing location. But it was still a great experience and the place even had their own private hut built on the rocks where we took a lunch break and relaxed for a bit.