Our time in Guatapé was coming to an end, so we decided to go on our last trip to a paisa town called San Carlos, which is a really small village with a huge history of violence due to the gerillas in the past decade. After stationing 1500 troops there, things calmed down quickly, and now it’s filled with coffee shops and bakeries along with the lively graffiti arts in the wall.

We started our day early on a Honda CB125 and we watched the sunrise from the road between Guatapé and San Rafael, which was beautifully lighting up our way through the serpentine. After San Rafael we got into a brand new road along the river and the lake, which was only having a couple of landslides after La Playa.

Once we made it around the lake we started our ascend towards San Carlos in an even more beautiful view surrounded by the bamboo and palm trees between two valleys and the road leading us from one to the other and back.

After arriving to San Carlos we decided to pay the famous waterfall a visit before exploring the Main Square. The rocky road to the mountain was taxing for the bike and my wife in the passenger seat as well, but the view was worth it. We spent there a couple hours, then had our coffee in the town. We waited 10-15 minutes for the rain to start and checked out the famous graffiti.

Originally we planned to try the off-road track through the mountains, but due to the rain, we decided to go to Granada instead. Despite being the main road, it was the same experience. Wheels deep in the mud, rocks everywhere and we were sliding constantly from one side of the somewhat stable path to the other. The busses and the trucks helped a bit finding a decent line through the pools, but when a complete herd of cows were running at us, I nearly shat myself.

Almost an hour of bathing in the mud, but we made it through and through the last 22 kms we were on paved road again. Granada was still beautiful and after walking around a bit we bought a bag of fresh fried potato chips from a street vendor and headed back to Guatapé.

This second time the road was much less uncomfortable and we made pretty decent time through the mountain until we arrived at the end of the paved road, and we had to fight with the rocks again. Balancing at the side of the road next to the construction of the road was just the cherry on top. Over 9.5 hours and 142 kms after the departure we were back at our place, and a hot shower and nice dinner helped us feel comfortable again.

All in all it was a really nice trip and a good way to close our time in Guatapé as it had everything we experienced through the month we spent there and even more…