Hiking in El Ocobo

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Having been in Bogotá now for 1 month, I'd just about got myself settled and sorted with visas, phones, bank accounts, etc., so this weekend I went with my housemate James to get out of the city and do some hiking in the surrounding mountains. I'd heard a few weeks ago about a local hiking club which organises trips every weekend, so that seemed the best place to start. We got up at 5.45am to meet up with this group of about 15 Colombians, we all got on a small coach and we headed about 50 miles south of the city to a place called El Ocobo near Fusagasuga.

It was awesome! The weather was beautiful (James being an Aussie found it hilarious at how easily I burned, but in my defence we're so close to the equator you could probably trip over it if you weren't looking!). The mountains here are stunning - really tall, steep sheer mountain faces and ridge walks, and the whole country is insanely fertile so everywhere you look is green forest unless its been cleared for a small farm or village. Today we were at just over 1000m above sea level (so it was a walk in the park compared to the 2,600m in Bogotá!), and we were walking through coffee plantations for a lot of the route before we got on top of a sharp ridge which we walked along for a few hours with amazing views on either side.

The area where we were walking is an area which has been occupied for ages by an indiginous group called the Panches, and all along the walk we found about a half dozen carvings in the rocks of crazy symbols which are apparently somewhere between 1 and 2 thousand years old! We were also able to walk out onto rocks hanging hundreds of metres over the valley below which was mind-blowing. The highest one was called La Cabeza del Indio and standing on that one we were looking down on the huge condors riding the thermals above the valley, with our heads almost in the clouds. Amazing! A great start for my first trip out of Bogotá.

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