If you’re going to Medellín, you absolutely have to factor in time for a day trip to Guatapé and Piedra del Peñol. We had initially planned to do this day trip on our own but, when we calculated costs, we realized that it’d be most cost and time efficient to go with Tours Guatapé; we ended up seeing more sights for less money than we would have spent had we gone on our own. While the tour is conducted in Spanish, and I’m sure we missed some facts, we didn’t feel gypped by any means. 5FT Tip: Go on this tour even if you don’t speak a word of Spanish; you’ll get by and enjoy the stress-free day.
What’s included? The tour costs 69,000 pesos and is totally worth the cost!
- Continental Breakfast
- Visit to the town of Marinilla
- Visit to the town of Peñol
- Climb up Piedra del Peñol (entrance is an extra 12,000 pesos)
- Walking Tour of Guatapé
- Typical Colombian Lunch in Restaurant
- Boat Cruise in Guatapé
- All Transportation
- Professional Guides
While the town of Marinilla was cute, and home to the best Guanoabana smoothie around, and the town of Peñol was interesting, the real highlight was climbing Piedra del Peñol. Piedra del Peñol is a vertical rock face that offers an unbelievable vista…at a price: in order to take in the views, you have to climb 740 stairs straight up!
The climb itself goes by faster than you’d think, as they kindly mark every 25th stair to motivate you to keep climbing; it’s very do-able, even the oldies were doing it! The rock seems like something unnaturally placed in the middle of a spectacular channel of water and land that, as seen from the top, is an indescribable landscape. This is a great example of the diversity of Colombia’s landscapes — you have rolling hills and mountains of pure green, arid desert, and caribbean beaches, and then there’s this seemingly carved out area that creates something very different from the rest of the landscape.
The town below Piedra del Peñol, Guatapé, is absolutely adorable and colorful; it’s a great town to wander for an afternoon. There’s a unique form of decorative art on the buildings, each telling a different story seeming to revolve around the history of Guatapé itself.
The tour as a whole really is a great price for what you get, and one of the best money-to-sights tours we have seen.
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