Next stop in Columbia was a place called Villa De Leiva which was a really quaint little old town with a huge cobble stoned central plaza that was set against the backdrop of these amazing mountains. It was really beautiful and very chilled out which was a nice change after Bogota. dad - we tried to find the bar where Elvis´s old drummer plays but had no luck. We read up in our guide books and decided that it would be a great idea to go and do this hike up to a spot called Lake Iguaque. From our reading we learned that it was a leisurely 6 to 6.5 hour return hike. I state again that it said LEISURELY! Well to be truthful it was anything but. You catch a bus out of town towards the national park and get off at the park entrance where you are then supposed to walk 3.5kms to the Rangers Station to start the hike. Well we walked that and then some to find the right place but eventually got there. The lovely lady in the office took our entrance fee and pointed us in the right direction for the trail. I won´t bore you with all the details but it was a hard hike. We peaked at about 3800m and both nearly gave up towards the end. The problem was that after the first half of the hike the signs stopped giving you any indication of how far you had come or how much further you had to go! Every time that we thought we were close we would come across yet another bloody wooden arrow pointing us up yet another rise. The path was all rocks and tree roots so if you were not looking carefully it was easy to end up off track and unsure if you were still going the right way. We did make it in the end though and I have to say that the sense of achievement made it all worthwhile. A good thing for that too as if we had been waiting for the spectacular lake to make up for the hike we would have been sorely disappointed! It was pretty but nothing special worth hiking up a vertical hell for ;-) The view back across the valley was another story all together though. It was breathtaking. I do not think our photos do it justice but it was amazing. On our walk back down we came across a few trekkers who were waving around bits of plant roots and hugging trees and giggling away, I think they were probably on a mushroom trek or something, all I could think was man, you people have no idea what is in store for you!
Gluttons for punishment that we are we next bused our way over to Manizales as I had read that you could go up into the national park there and hike/climb up to the top of Mount Ruiz which is a volcano of about 5200m and has snow on the top of it. You would think that for my break from the ski hill the last thing I would want to see was snow but hey I actually have to admit to missing it a bit. Anyway, this one was not looking like too hard a mission as the bus actually takes you up to 4800m and then you just hike up the last part which is about an hour. It was great fun even if the altitude head spins did hit us a couple of times. Nadia really got a kick out of playing in the little bit of snow up there and we built a snowman for our neice Taleah too. I was glad to be back down at the end of the day though as it was really cold for us after so much warm weather!
