There are so many good reasons to travel, and one of my favourite ones is colour. Maybe because I live in Edinburgh.
Colour abounds in Colombia, and Guatape is one of the places where it peaks. It feels like everyone here likes colour so much that they went a bit overboard, and the result is so happy and frivolous that it’s tempting to whistle your way up and down the streets of this small town a couple of hours east of Medellin.
The colours of Guatape are fresh, and sing, and tell stories.
A bench? Let’s paint it (and why stop at one colour?)
Tuktuk? Let’s go for a million colours!
As we approach Guadape in one of these kaleidoscopic vehicles, we almost crash as our driver overtakes at hair-raising speed and only very narrowly slots in again. Is he on cocaine? And do we care? The sky is so blue; if we’re going to die, a psychedelic tutktuk may not be the worst place to do so.
Why has Guadape embraced colour so much? Perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that its neighbouring town, Peñin, became the casualty of a hydraulic dam in the 70s. If a whole town can disappear down the lake, why not paint this one so brightly it would be visible even under water?!
Just outside Guadape stands something very un-colourful: a giant rock. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the black bruise on my nail that also refuses to go away. It is simply known as la piedra, and it used to sit there doing nothing. But then someone with an entrepreneurial hunch bought it for an insignificant amount of money, perhaps 2000 pesos, carved 649 steps out of the side, and opened it up to tourism. That man is now laughing all the way to the bank.
But the view of the land and waterscape below is fabulous.