Today, Erika and I have plans to make it to the rock. The sky looks to be clearing up and we know the views should be lovely from the top. Since there is not much going on, we opted to do, what we later learned, was 16KM (excluding climbing the rock), the Ring Road route. It loops around town and allows one to indulge of the scenery between Guatepe and La Piedra, the area around the rock, El Peñol.
It ended up being SUCH a great walk. We chatted, took pictures, and took in the countryside. Some of the houses here are beautiful and others offered amazing views of the city and the “great rock.”
This rock is MASSIVE.
When we arrived, we said to ourselves, this rock is massive, but who decided to build some stairs off to the side AND do we really have to climb it?!
Why not, we are here!
Here were the stairs we had to climb!
Right before the entrance is a lookout point that allows you to take in all of Guatepe/La Piedra. It was soo amazing. The pictures do not do it justice, but we had to try!
So in all it took us 3 hours to reach the rock, 1.5 hours to climb and explore the rock, and about 1 hr to reach the plaza in Guatepe. We were not necessarily expecting this much “excitement” but it was so worth it. The views did not let us down and the weather was great!
We decided to venture into town and find some veggies to whip up an afternoon snack that would tide us over to dinner. Did I mention I love getting veggies from the small tiendas and stands on the side of the street? Before we reached there, we saw a ton of horses and people out.
We kept walking and decided to whip up some guacamole (check out THIS pepper).
We also bought some plantains and I introduced Erika to the world of lightly toasted plantain chips. I think she will forever be hooked. I do not know who first exposed me, but I am soo glad they did. Yummy!
Finally, someone told us what was going on in town. All the excitement around town is because it is the Virgin Mary Festival, not quite sure what it represents, but it was supposed to be a ton of people hanging around the plaza, and music, and food. Sounds great! We decided we would go into town and find some dinner, buttttt something changed! We passed this lady who sold these itty-bitty empanadas with potatoes..
and we got to brainstorming, lol. We decided we would use our set budget for dinner or snacking on food in the plaza (aka street food). We titled it the Taste of Guatepe. It was the most amazing experience ever. Then we found another lady with veggie empanadas.
We kept walking and saw this SUPER EFFICIENT arepa stand.
It seemed to be a good look. Tons of people standing around waiting on them to serve AND the only business they are in are arepas! Sounds like a winner. We decided to engage in arepas with cheese!
Then we saw these other goodies.. Erika said they were arepas with cheese mixed into the dough.. okay, I am down!
They were DELICIOUS. They topped them with this sweet leche (milk) kind of sauce).
and then we had fried potatoes (which I forgot to take a picture of). This was really a bag of grease, lol. And the thing we had before was soo good, we decided to have another one.
Then what is left.. dessert!
These were not great, but we had to have it. We were on a roll! We topped it off with some fresh mora juice (blackberry).
The town was great. The students played music well into the evening and were great. Kids made a makeshift soccer field in the square near the fountain. Just people everywhere.
I had more grease, cheese, and other goodies in 2 hours, then I have had in weeks, lol! We managed to have all of this plus fresh juice and desert, for well below our budget! I could NOT have asked for anything more exciting for an evening.. but it didn’t stop there. There were a few bars playing music and we congregated around one and enjoyed some great crossover.
I LOVE this lake town. It reminds me of a Jr. Lake Havasu. This has been such a fabulous day! Who would have thought we would do so much in one day. The plan is kayaking tomorrow. Another first, I am nervously exciting. I do not want to capsize!
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