We went on a tour that took us as far into the Los Nevados National Park as is currently allowed since there is an active volcano there (more on that later).
We were picked up very early (6:30 AM) at our apartment by taxi and taken to a central meeting point downtown. When everyone was loaded, there were 22 people on the tour which was a full bus.
We drove about 1 1/2 hours for breakfast and then to the park. It is only 30 miles or so but mountain roads are windy and slow. Along the way, we stopped and looked at the paramo which is a bit similar to tundra in Colorado but there are cactus type plants that grow much taller than typical tundra plants.
Plants in paramo area
Nevado Del Ruiz is 5,321 m (17,457 ft) high and has been active since 2016. We did get a rare glimpse of the mountain itself but from our side of the mountain we couldn’t see any activity. The point that we walked up to was about 4557 m (14,950 ft) was the highest either of us has been in the past. Walking up a long but not really steep trail to this point was work. While we were there, it started to sleet and it was snowing lightly by the time we got back on the bus.
We parked and walked a short way uphill
There is a sad and amazing story related to the the eruption in 1985. Worth the short read.
After we started back down is when the clouds cleared briefly but long enough to get pictures of the summit. We stopped at the same restaurant for lunch and then went to a natural hot spring and warmed up in the hot water before returning to town.
Chipre is a subdivision of Manizales, on one of the higher areas of town. The view of the city is wonderful and the area is busy and safe. They have wonderful holiday lights, lots of restaurants, and even a small amusement park.
One unique thing is Chipre Tower which is 131 feet high. The tower was originally just a water tower but while it remains in use for that purpose, it has creatively had a restaurant and viewing area added. You can even fasten on a safety belt and walk around on the outside ramp if you are so inclined. (We weren’t.)
Best of all, it was a 5 minute walk from our apartment.
This picture doesn’t really give you an idea of how steep the streets are in Manizales. Think STEEP for several blocks in a row!
Manizales is a town of about 400,000-500,000 people nestled in the Andes. It has many streets which could rival San Francisco for their long steep inclines. I am not particularly comfortable with them but drivers don’t seem fazed, even though most vehicles are standard transmissions.
Walking uphill is a challenge but we just rest a lot. Downhill makes me nervous since I must be careful not to slip and fall.
There are a couple of cable cars that have been in use for many years now.
Lots of traffic but it seems to move along well. We were in a cab at what I would expect to be rush hour and we kept moving at a slow but steady pace across town.
And like many other cities in Colombia, beautiful holiday lights!
Jardin plaza dominated by church made mid 20th century using hand carved stones
By the time we left Medellin, we were ready for small laid back towns. We’d heard good things about Jardin and they were true. Primarily an agriculture area, there is some tourism. Very few expats live here, about 30-40 according to our guide. Compare that to Boquete which is about the same size and has 1000-2000 expats! We got lots of chances to practice our Spanish, especially since we staying in an Airbnb home of a young couple and an almost 3 year old who spoke very, very little English.
We spent 12 days in Jardin, a small town with a population of under 10,000 and during that time we did a lot of walking, a horse back ride, rode the Gurracha and saw the Cock of the Rock birds.
Jardin is a very vibrant town with a good sized plaza and a large church built early in the 20th century. It doesn’t seem to matter what day or the time of day, there are almost always tons of people in the plaza…sitting, walking, talking, drinking. We quite enjoyed just walking around the town. There is a very laid back feeling of times long gone in most US cities and towns; people standing outside chatting in the evenings. Very community oriented.
Horse waiting for its rider
The altitude of Jardin is about one mile above sea level. This town has a very busy plaza, no stop signs/stop lights, and it is not uncommon to see horses walking or being led down the street.
The horse back ride in the mountains was amazing and very scary for me. The horses were well trained and it was just Dan, myself, and the guide. But the trail was sometimes muddy up to the horses’ knees, uneven, and often along the very edge of the mountain which dropped off at about 160 degree angle.
The views were amazing! Coffee and bananas and plantains are grown on these steep mountains and everything is green, green, green. And we saw a lot of butterflies, even more than we saw when we went to butterfly exhibits in different towns!
Our ride, 100,000 pesos each ($33 each) included a lunch. We had opted for the vegetarian lunch which was carried in the saddlebags. It was rice, avocado, fried plantain, and a hard boiled egg, all wrapped in a fresh plantain leaf, and tied with string. It was very tasty and I am sure that the leaves were composted or fed to some animal that night.
Dan walked through a cave and behind a waterfall but I opted to rest instead. While we were sitting for lunch, there was a cow that was VERY friendly. We kept shooing her away but she wanted to be with us. Maybe she was lonely.
It was about a 3-4 hour ride plus transportation to and from the town to the place up the mountain with the horses. We got our money’s worth for sure!
The Garrucha is a hand made cart that goes from one end of town up the mountain via a cable. Built in 1995, the round trip is just over $2 per person and you can spend as much time on the mountain as you want. The views from the mountain are incredible although you can’t see a lot through the slots as you go up or down in the Garrucha. It is obvious that the person translating or printing the signs is not an English speaker. Check out the views and signs here.
The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock or Tunki is an impressive, odd looking bird, widely considered the national bird of Peru. It has a rounded crest on the head of the male and is bright red on the upper part of the body with grey and black on the lower half. We went to a private reserve where we saw at least 3 males (no females) who were very territorial and loud. Here are some pictures of the Tunki as well as some other birds we saw at the reserve. There is also a short video so you can hear them.
We did another tour in Jardin, this one by car where we went to various places near Jardin. It was a laid back tour with just us and the guide.
We took the train almost everywhere we didn’t walk to in Medellin. Taxis are cheap and we used them occasionally but mostly the train since the closest station was only about 10 minutes away. These electric trains are used a lot in this area. They could be very crowded and we kept our backpacks on our fronts instead of our backs in the crowds. Often a young person would offer me (and sometimes Lesia) their seat. I appreciated that since standing a long time can be an issue for me. The trains were clean and everyone was polite on them.
There are also a couple of cable cars as part of the train system and one set of 6 outdoor escalators in Comuna 13, more on that in another blog.
One cable car route takes you to Arvi Park. It is delightfully cool up there and literally a breath of fresh air in this smoggy city. The park is mostly untouched with a couple of buildings and some vendors for things like bathrooms, shelter, etc. The 4 of us spent several hours walking around there and Dan went back on his own another day.
Comuna 13 used to be a very dangerous, not well accessed area but over the years, that has changed dramatically. Built on the side of a mountain, the streets are steep and the houses very basic. The escalators were added in 2011 and is now a model for other cities around the world.
We took the free tour (donations at the end) with a woman who grew up in Comuna 13. As a child she was embarrassed to say she was from this area of town. Now with the violence and drugs under fairly good control, she is proud to say this is her home. You can see a very nice story about the area and the escalators here.
Our guide explained some of the beautiful graffiti art (art as opposed to “gang tags”), took us through a quick tour of her house in Comuna 13, and even provided entertainment compliments of some young students (school holiday) doing some break dancing and another man doing a rap song. The students were moderately skilled but I really liked that they were putting their energy into learning to dance rather than other less savory efforts.
Pueblito Paisa (Little Town) is located on the top of Nutibarra Hill (Cerro Nutibarra) in Medellin. It is a replica of a typical turn of the century Antioquia town with a traditional stone fountain in the middle of the town square, a church and other buildings. The view of the city and surrounding mountains and valleys is lovely and there is a small museum with old photos that is interesting.
I found the most interesting part was information on silleteros. These are hand made art that is carried on the person’s back during a parade. The art is very intricate floral designs, done the night before the parade. The work that goes into the designs is amazing. Like a parade float, much of it is last minute. Unlike a parade float, it is carried on the person’s back! Would have loved to actually see a parade. You can get a sense of one here and here.
Guatapé is a wonderful small town (5000 people in 2009). It is high enough (about 6300 feet) for the temperatures to be slightly cool in the evening and in the 70’s or very low 80’s during the daytime.
There are two main attractions in Guatapé. First, the majority of the houses have a fresco type design on the lower part of the front of their houses/buildings. The designs are seldom repeated on different buildings (except sheep seem to be repeated more than most other designs). The town is clean and safe.
The other thing is climbing the big rock called El Peñón de Guatapé. El Peñón is 657 feet high. A huge monolith that overlooks the area that was partially flooded to build a dam. Two sets of stairs were added along a huge crack in one side of the rock (one up and one down). We did fine, all 740 steps, albeit slowly, going up and down the rock. If we did that 2-3 times a week we would be in awesome shape!
A panga boat like this one took us from land out to our sailboat.
There is no road between Panama and Colombia, only thick jungle and unsavory characters (so I’m told). So the options are to go by boat or plane between the countries. Plane is faster and cheaper but we decided to splurge and take a catamaran (type of sailboat) and enjoy a few of the over 300 San Blas Islands.
The trip to the sailboat started early, we were picked up by the shuttle close to 5 A.M. After a number of stops, we drove through jungle area and finally reached an area where we paid a small tax to the indigenous people to be taken by panga (small covered boat with outboard motor) to the catamaran.
Locals use various boats to transport people and goods in this area.
That trip was about 40 minutes or so to reach the sailboat which was anchored near one of the over 300 islands in the area called “San Blas”. The islands range in size from something you can walk around the outer perimeter in 5 minutes to something large enough for a number of houses. The ones we went to were all either uninhabited or inhabited by the Kuna natives.
The water around the islands is beautiful and some had nice fish that were visible when snorkeling. Unfortunately there was no water treatment so the coral in the area had been damaged a fair amount from waste and anchors.
On the inhabited islands, the locals sold beer and sodas and some crafts. We bought a beautiful mola for $20 from the woman who made it. It took her about 2 weeks of working off and on to cut out and sew the design on by hand. We paid $20 for ours and will frame it when we eventually return to Durango. They sell for much more in the stores.
Some islands had a lot of coconut trees, others didn’t. I was walking between two trees one afternoon and a coconut fell about 3 feet from me as I passed. Whew, that was too close for comfort!
There were 13 passengers and 3 crew on the boat. The oldest person other than us…including the captain, was 31. While we didn’t care for the smoking that several of them did, everyone was extremely nice and there were no problems between any of the passengers. The people were from England, Scotland, Australia, and Germany. We were the only Americans on the ship. There was one crew member with good English but Dan and I had an hour long conversation with the captain, entirely in Spanish, one night. While we didn’t understand 100% of it, we did get much of it…about Colombian life, drugs, safety, etc. Our Spanish improves every day.
Life on the boat was wake up, eat breakfast, swim or take the dingy to the island where you could snorkel, walk around, or just relax. Lunch was served about 1 or so while we went to the next island. The food was delicious, plentiful, and they did an amazing job of working with various allergies or food limitations among the passengers. We had delicious lfresh lobster one night. We had octopus another night (my least favorite meal) and the other meals were more basic. One passenger couldn’t eat shellfish so he got a nice steak that night! All this from a tiny, tiny, tiny galley.
Some islands were very close, others far apart. Notice how low to the water this one in the foreground is. This was common and these will quickly disappear as the ocean rises due to climate change.
I had been concerned about feeling claustrophobic on the boat but our room was fine and they were able to provide power for my CPAP at night. We each brought a backpack with clothes, etc. (everything else was stowed for the trip) but we didn’t really change clothes since we were in bathing suites the entire time.
We arrived in Cartagena Columbia after 3 days of island hopping and then 36 hours of open seas. I was worried about the open seas but the weather was good so it wasn’t choppy and a little Dramamine worked great.
Main petroglyph at Caldera. Photo from TripAdvisor.com
Caldera is a very small town only about 17 miles from Vista Grande, 35 minutes by car. It is one of the towns that we passed through on the way to Bocas del Toro.
First we stopped off to see some petroglyphs on large rocks. The rocks were thrown out of Volcan Baru at some time in the past. According to this website, the carving was done about 1000 years ago. The area is a national park although there isn’t any really easy access. You have to go through the lower part of a fence (barbed wire above you so crouch carefully) and then walk about 10-15 minutes through a field to get to the park.
There are many, many relatively small boulders from one of the eruptions of Baru and some are quite large. To make the carvings easier to see, they have been painted white.
After we looked at the petroglyphs, we drove a little farther and then parked. We walked 4 kilometers each way (about 5 miles round trip) to Paraiso Escondido La Abuela Hostel where we looked but did not go into a very nice hot spring pool. The hike was fairly flat and had a mixture of full sun and nice shade along the way.
It would have been a wonderful hike if we had started earlier (we started about 9:45 by the time we arrived after the petroglyphs and Caldera may be close to Boquete but the temperatures are worlds apart. Caldera is only about 814 feet high where as Vista Grande is about 3858′. Instead of temperatures in the 70’s, they were in the mid 80’s (plus fairly humid). So the town is aptly named since “caldera” translates to “boiler”.
We had brought enough water but didn’t carry all of it with us on the hike. Big mistake. I ran through my water and then Dan’s and finally Lesia’s. Dan went down to the river 3 times to fill the water bottles with river water to pour over my head. Finally Lesia walked ahead and brought the truck back so save me some walking although by then I was within 5-10 minutes of our parking spot…I could have made it but was glad not to have to.Here are some images of the cladera hike.
If we go back again, we will about 7 in the morning and take 2 containers of water for each person with us. That way we will be finished by about 10:30 and have a lovely walk. The 5 miles isn’t the hard part of the hike at all.
Volcan is a lovely area about an hour and a half from Boquete. It is known as the Little Switzerland of Panama. It is a little higher altitude than Boquete and about 1/3 fewer people. It is more agriculture related and cheaper to live. The temperatures are similar to Boquete, 60-75 degrees Fahrenheit. We went there on September 15th which is the first day of their fall festival. We didn’t want to be in the crowds of people that would be there the next day for the parade however we did see quite a few float type decorations at various places along the road.
We couldn’t see the top of Volcan Baru, the highest point in Panama (11,401 feet) because as usual it was overcast. Baru is close to Volcan.
We are staying at Vista Grande. This property has 4 apartments. The three one bedroom apartments are rented out and the owners live in the 2 bedroom apartment above us.
I never tire of the view just outside our door. They are constantly changing and I love them whether it is sunny or socked in. Enjoy looking at them.
The water around the islands is beautiful and some had nice fish that were visible when snorkeling. Unfortunately there was no water treatment so the coral in the area had been damaged a fair amount from waste and anchors.
