The Prodigal Tourist Returns to Guatape

I probably don’t have to promote the village of Guatape since it is a well-known tourist site that draws most first-time visitors to Medellin, Colombia like metal filings to a magnet. I, too, soon found myself drawn there the first time I visited Medellin five years ago.

I had never gone back and had forgotten why when I decided to return and photograph it more thoroughly than I did the first time I breezed through. I didn’t have much time

to do a good job the first time because I misjudged how long it would take me to get there and back in a single day. I didn’t arrive at El Penal, which is a little over a mile outside Guatape until about noon. I climbed the volcanic cone, walked into town, took a few pictures, and left by 4:00 in the afternoon.

Over the years I kept seeing photos on the internet of parts of the town I had missed and decided I had done a bad job photographing the place the first time around.

Guatape is easy to access from Medellin. It lies only about 40 miles outside the city. The cheapest way to get there is to buy a bus ticket at Medellin’s north-end bus station. It costs only $4.00 to $5.00 each way. A bus leaves there for Guatape every 20 minutes. You can’t buy a round-trip ticket because some return buses in the late afternoon are packed with people coming home from work at El Penal or Guatape. I would recommend that you buy your return ticket in Guatape as soon as you arrive because it might be difficult to reserve a seat if you wait until the time you want to go back to Medellin. I made the mistake of taking the 5:20 pm bus back to the city, and the bus was packed with people coming home from work. All the seats were taken and the aisle was filled with passengers. I don’t think the commuters bought tickets. Instead, they would give the driver a few thousand pesos as they prepared to jump off the moving bus. He never counted their offerings. A few miles outside Guatape a small man got on the bus. Hanging from his belt was a machete ensconced in a rather elaborately carved wooden sheath. Its detailed design was the best crafted and most sophisticated artwork I had seen all day. He also was holding a rope attached to a medium-sized dog. The dog must have made the trip many times before because he lay down under the seat in front of me, and rested his head on top of my foot.
I suspect the man was a field worker who would bring his dog to work for companionship.

The man and the dog left the bus at one of the many stops it made into the city.

You can, of course, rent a car and drive there yourself, but that will be much more expensive, and the traffic leaving Medellin is both constipated and chaotic. Also, in one of the cities you pass through between Medellin and Guatape, you have to negotiate a 180-degree turn to follow the correct route to El Penal or Guatape. Finally, you can book a tour to these sites in Medellin and the tour operator will get you there much faster than the bus, (the bus stops to pick up and deposit passengers both to and from Guatape making this 40-mile trip take from two to two and a half hours depending on the time of day), and it guarantees you will have a seat for the return trip. The cost of these tours is usually $40 and up. Some tours include the rental of ATVs and guide you to a waterfall somewhere outside of town where you can swim under the falls. This is no small advantage. I brought my bathing suit but could not find any place to rent ATVs after I arrived by bus.

The first time I visited here I got off the bus at El Penal, the volcanic cone with a staircase that weaves back and forth up its side. (Elderly folks should skip El Penal because there is no other way to reach the top). After paying an entry fee and climbing the stairs for about 20 minutes, you will be rewarded with numerous hot dog and souvenir stands, and a decent view of a large reservoir that wraps around Guatape. Presently it will not be worth your time, effort, and money to climb El Penal to photograph a reservoir that is now only 2/3rds full. A drought last year had almost emptied the reservoir and it still isn’t filled despite the torrential rains that Colombia has been experiencing over the past two months. Also, the best pictures of El Penal are taken from about a mile away (unless you want to photograph the ticket booth or the outside of the stairway to the top). 🙂

Five years ago I walked into town and got some nice shots not only of El Penal but also of the reservoir and a swinging cable bridge that helped me cross the dangerously active two-lane road that leads into town. If you decide to walk into town, be advised that there are no sidewalks and you will sometimes have to dodge speeding traffic while walking in the road.

Instead, this second time to Guatape I stayed on the bus and rode directly to Guatape’s bus station. The bus station is tiny and seems to be connected to a little store. After leaving the station, (and buying my return ticket), I walked one block up a small hill to the village plaza where I began to snap off dozens of pictures.

Guatape was putting up its Christmas decorations at the time. These were nice enough during the day but must be outright spectacular at night when they blaze against the colorful background of Guatape’s walls and buildings. If you choose to stay in Guatape at night to photograph the decorations be aware that the last bus leaves for Medellin at 8:30 pm, and unless you are driving a rental car, you will have to find a place to stay for the night. I can’t recommend a nice place to stay though I know of at least one youth hostel there. I’ve been told that Guatape has some sort of nightlife, but again can’t imagine where it might be located.

The food sold in Guatape is mostly tourist fare, for fine dining you will have to get your butt back to Medellin.

Guatape is also not the best place to strike up a conversation with the locals since tour buses unload herds of tourists whose purpose, for the locals, is to harvest tourist money as quickly and easily as possible. This is the reality of Guatape.

There are plenty of police around, however, so you don’t have to worry about leaving money there without getting something in return.

I walked around the village for over six hours finding many locations I had missed the first time I was there and took hundreds of photos. Here are a few:

This blog only scratches the surface of the many brilliant colors found on the streets and ally-ways in and around the town’s center. Always looking for something new and unexpected to photograph, traveled to Guatape’s outskirts where I found a more peaceful and verdant environment. This walk included the footbridge I had used the time I walked in from El Penal five years before. No one had fixed the broken slats that I had to step over to cross the bridge five years ago. Being older and wiser now, I did not venture onto the bridge. I did get my best shot of El Penal though during this circumnavigation of Guatape.

When I returned to the center I didn’t find its eye candy color as charming as I did earlier in the day. Its cloying brilliance made it feel like my camera was stuffing itself with cake frosting, and both it and I had had enough. We needed and meaningful and honest visual food, and we weren’t going to find it there.

Will I ever return to this rainbow-hued town that sits amidst a beautiful natural landscape? I doubt it. Like the village of Macondo, the fictional Colombian location for the dream-scape world created by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Guatape possesses glittering and extraordinary beauty on its surface while just below this painted fable lies only human folly. Do I recommend that you visit it? My opinion is beside the point. We both know you can’t resist its pull any more than I could, and you will probably enjoy it as a day trip, at least at first. My opinion, (for what it’s worth), echoes that old cliche: “it’s a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. 🙂