Day 44 - Guatepe (Nothingness)

I woke up today focused. I was going to do a lesson or two of Spanish, a little reading, and then "relax." HA! The end result was that what I did resembled ABSOLUTELY nothing similar to that.  I decided to have a bit of breakfast and then started tapping, tapping, tapping on my keyboard while enjoying this view from the balcony.

You can see the kayakers in the above picture.. I missed the super swimmers. From my understanding, a lot of people come to Guatepe to train for different triathlons, competitive sports, etc. The 2011 ITC Triathlon World Cup is to be held here in November. 

I am just super fancy this morning.. 

I've enjoyed a few cups of tea since I've been here. I am soo not a drinker of tea, but I liked this Hindu Tea. It was like a mild something with no herbal anythings. I can't describe it, but if any of you have any recommendations of things I should try along these lines, please let me know! 

So that thing we talked about yesterday came into fruition. I burned the SHYT outta my legs. They are peeling and quasi scaly looking, lol. Dayum this proximity to the equator.

Soo you know every hostel I stay in I share the good and the not so good with you. Well I stayed at Lakeview Hostel, one of 2 hostels in this lake town. The location, price, and people are great. The owners, Nick and Greg, are very friendly and definitely get it in with the best of them. I tried to take a snapshot of their running tally of beverages. 

In all fairness, I am not sure over what period of time this is, lol. I just know one line read 216 followed by a plus sign and a bunch more tally marks. It wouldn't surprise me how many they made from day to day. I saw them throw back a shyt load. But as I said, they were super friendly and helpful and the location of the hostel overlooking the lake was amazing. 

Butt.. let's talk about these beds and this bathroom. Starting with the former. These were the worst beds I have ever experienced. I changed beds 3 times until one was sufficient enough to sleep in. I felt like Dorothy and the 3 Bears. One was too hard, one too soft, one too noisy. The one I ended up in.. It was not made for the faint hearted. It ROCKED as if it wanted to collapse everytime I tried to get in. I know the smart thing would have been to pick another bed, but like I said.. this one was the "winner." It got to a point where you may as well have called me tarzan. I found myself climbing on a dresser to get into the bed because I refused to use the "ladder." Let's pause for a sec, so you can take a look.

Now my bed is the one with the blue thing and orange towel hanging off the bed. After the second night, I heard a crack and it was the wood. I told the management and he kinda wrote it off. After another night.. CrrrAck..

Now this is some absolute bullshyt if I ever saw something myself. I told him once again that there was a problem. I still don't believe they did anything and the volunteers took care of it. Now let's move on to the claustrophobic bathroom. This bathroom was SOO small. Everytime you turned, I promised you touched something. It freaked me out something serious.

These are what the water heaters look like when they use this voltage thing. It's kinda scary and I always hope I don't get electrocuted. At least this place had water pressure, but it was not as hot as I would have hoped.

Moving along... I have had the late night munchies. So the highlight of my evening were these bread things I got from the little tienda across the bridge. It's like mini-rolls I ate toasted.. 

of course with another soup I whipped up. I mean I clearly can't get enough. It's one of the easiest things to make with the ingredients I have. I don't want to stock up on too much stuff since I only have a week left. I think I may be suffering from a bit of homesickness. I have been craving things that are clearly domestic.. peanut butter, queso cheese, chicken noodle soup bowls from Surin West, Shrimp Chimichangas from Los Juanes, and of course a frozen drink from Fat Tuesday!

Oh well. I am going to try and stay in the moment, lol.

Day 43 - Guatepe (Professional kayaker...naah)

Oh today was another fabulous day on the lake, lol! I slept in until 8:15am. I must have been tired and then some! The day started out cloudy and we were unsure if we were going to be able to venture out and do a bit of hiking. As our luck would have it, the skies parted ways and kayaking was back on the map!

We settled for a bit of breakfast, I got a quick tutorial about kayaking. It went something like this "Paddle like this *insert rowing motion demonstration* and paddle in sync to make ways and keep from capsizing." Nick, one of the ownders, helped us into the kayak and pushed us on our way, lol.

Erika has been kayaking before, so she helped me get settled. The first started off a bit rocky, then all of a sudden we were in sync and making movements.  Look at that form, lol.

 

For a second, I felt like a professional, making each stroke count.. Then I was out of sync quickly and missed the water, lol. Professional kayaker... nah! We kayaked a good bit out and around to different areas, inclusing a few secluded places. It was awesome, although it took some work, lol. There were a few times that we just let the current drift us and enjoyed the lush surroundings and the gentle rides on the waves.

Our silliness!

Some kinda way, I managed to super tan just my ankles.. THAT is NOT a shadow we are looking at. That's probably going to burn tomorrow.

After the hike, we decided to venture into town and enjoy watching the locals interact with various vendors and partake in some water sports! It was awesome to see people enjoy their time away from the hustle and bustle of the city. 

This was a super popular pastry place. I couldn't eat it because it was like a gelatin pastry. Yuck. But I loved their style! 

 

More plantain chips! 

The locals!

A bit of cable gliding..

Adventures around town..

A neighborhood pool!

Someone made and hung these Virgin Mary flags on everyone's door. I believe it represents the Colombian's faith and protection on each of their homes. There were huge celebrations and mass services in the Plaza.

I can't believe the day is coming to an end. Erika heads out and I am just looking to enjoy some down time over the evening. The highlight was I finally saw limitless, and it proved to be very good!

Day 42 - Guatepe (The Rock/ A Taste of Guatepe)

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!