La Piedra del Peñol

For my last day in Medellín I went on a day trip with some gringos from the hostel to check out La Piedra del Peñol, supposedly the second largest rock in the world. From left to right you've got me, a Dutch lady named Patricia (although pronounced completely differently), Jeff, an Irish journalist who's really into heavy metal, a radical leftist kid named Jason who hails (unsurprisingly) from Vancouver Island, and Paul, the hostel owner from Seattle/New Zealand who took us on the tour.

No one knows where it came from, but the indigenous tribes believed it to be evil. Frankly, I'd have to agree, the thing looks menacing, and the unhappy looking statues of La Virgen Maria that people put up in it's crevices don't help at all. Anyway, by some engineering marvel, stairs were built into the rock. I'm not sure by whom, perhaps by the same people who wrote GI on the side of it in big white letters, whatever that stands for. They took forever to climb and with the thin mountain air I was wheezing again by the time we reached the top.

But man, was it worth it. The view of the surrounding lakes was absolutely spectacular. It was a beautiful day with bright sun and awesome cumulous clouds all across the horizon. There were even a couple butterflies who'd made their way to the top as well and were flying around each other over the names people enscribed within hearts on the tiles. One of the butterflies even landed on me, at which point I became so concerned I might be in a Disney movie that I accidentally scared it off.