I recently came back from a 6-day trip in Cocuy which is located in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Colombia and has the most mountains that are perpetually covered in snow in the whole country. (There are very few of them, by the way, I think 6 spots?). Anyway, so me and 11 other people (mostly Colombians but other nationalities also) spent the long holiday weekend there, and I spent 3 days more. 🙂
We did 3 of the currently-open hikes – all are “all-day” hikes and are pretty rigorous due to the altitude (usually starting around 4200m and ending around 4900m). As context, Bogota is pretty high up (about the Rocky Mountains of Colorado at around 8,500 feet, or 2600m. So even though I’m used to “high”, this is almost twice as high!
We left on Friday night for a 10-hour bus and arrive to Guican (which is technically closer to the trails of “Cocuy” than the town of Cocuy is. 😊 After arriving around 7am, we ate a nice breakfast, paid for our registration and insurance of the trails, watched a short presentation video, and bought some food. I was told that we could use the kitchen, which turned out to NOT exactly be true, but we still saved money by buying our own supplies that they cooked for us and charged us for (admittedly, way less than if we didn’t pick up our supplies).
We drove in Jeeps to the cabins where we will spend the night Sat and Sun and do the hike from the cabins there on Sunday. The transportation was a little expensive for the entire area, being about 70k COP per hour. But it is what it is! 😊 We arrived and the cabins were beautiful, but it’s downpouring rain. We stay in the cabin to wait for the rain to die down and then had a tinto (small coffee)/chocolate before we decided to just walk and try to acclimatize ourselves to the higher altitude. We did a very short trail and it was a beautiful area.
We slept that night without heat and this high up, it gets COLD! I was breathing and you could see the breath at like 7pm, from inside the cabin. The “heat” was from a fire and they gave us firewood but once you went to your room, you wanted all the fleece and warmth you could get!
Sleeping for me was fine because I was adequately prepared with fleece and wool socks that I had gotten for my Patagonia (in the winter) trip! So I was good! There were others whose body didn’t handle the altitude as well, or who had were cold, and so not everyone slept great, but you do what you can.
Our hike on Sunday was great! I think it was my favorite hike of the three. They called it “RitaCuwa” which is perhaps the closest approximation to the indigenous name “ItaU’Wa”. Of the three hikes, it’s the one on the left on the map.
Because we were already at Cabanas Kanwara, our two guides came to us and from the cabins, guided us up the mountain past Rio Cardenillo (which flows from glacier water) and Posada Sierra Nevada until the glacier mountain. As you can see, we got as close as you could because we are forbidden from touching the snow (they say it’s sacred snow, but who knows what the indigenous people actually believe) but you can get up close and personal! One person in our group hadn’t even seen snow before so that was fun! On the way back, it rained about half of it, for the bottom half, and my shoes got muddy (unfortunately, I didn’t plan well and they were the only shoes I brought) but it was a tiring day! The breakfast was filling and the lunch/dinner (at 4pm) was based on the food we had brought from the town (lentils, rice, hot dogs, hot chocolate, bread). A really beautiful hike for me, passing by the river at various points, seeing the glacier mountain, and even getting wet on the way back! It’s all part of the Cocuy experience.
On Monday, the rest of the team had to leave to go back to work so they bought their bus tickets and decided to head back between 10am and 4pm. I took the whole week off for vacation because I’m not gonna travel 20 hours there and back to only do one hike! No way! So me and a girl Jennifer had decided ahead of time that we would stay until Thursday to do all of the hikes (all 3 of them). She and I, and then two others, decided to stay and do a hike on Monday because their school was in a strike and not in session! LOL.
For us, on Monday, we went to Laguna Grande. We again had a guide who picked us up from the cabins. We were all packed and ready to go at 430am which is quite early for them but pretty normal for me since I teach English starting at 430! J Anyway, besides a mud patch in the beginning of the trail, it was really nice! I think this was Jennifer’s favorite trip of the 3. It was pretty flat up until the Valle de los Frailejones where it then, finally, started to go up and kept going. Eventually, the mountain turned really steep and we crossed an only-rocky area (too high for any plants), but still beautiful from the rocks, until we hit the Laguna Grande (“big lake”) and sat down to enjoy our lunch. Jennifer and I had brought our lunch (lentils and rice) and the students had made a pasta. We weren’t that close to the lake, since it was a fair distance down (accessible but why bother) but the wind was fairly constant and it got a little bit cold from that. I think this took us 4.5 hours to go up and 4 hours to go down. So it was maybe 1.5 hours longer than the previous day’s 7 (and that one could have been done in 6 if we didn’t stop for photos all the time).
We returned back to the pueblo where the students left on their bus and Jennifer and I stayed in a hotel. We had full access to the kitchen, so we cooked dinner and had a relaxing day (Tuesday) to not do any hikes! We went to the hot springs, walked around the town, cooked breakfast/lunch/dinner and even lunch for the next day (which we hiked).
It was nice to be in a beautiful hotel with plants all around, hot showers, and just not do any hikes! As I said, we spent the night Monday night after everyone else had left, and left Tuesday night to go to our cabin that’s very close to the third trail.
We arrived a little bit late due to an engine problem, but thankfully, we arrived – and we even had found two Israelis to be with us on our trip! One got sick but the other went with us and helped split the cost of the guide with us and he was really cool. His English is good, and his Spanish was also surprisingly good! He’s very aggressive in seeking out opportunities to practice his Spanish – he’s more extroverted than I am lol. Anyway, we woke up at 430am (like always), and I slept in my sleeping bag which was superrrrr warm, and we walked the 40 minutes to the Puesto del Control where you then technically start the hike and then we hiked the longest trail of all, all the way to el Pulpito del Diablo and Pan de Azucar. I don’t recall exact numbers, but it was probably 9-10 hours of hiking. Very few photos as no one really wanted any (it was our last day after all). We had a nice filling lunch at the top, and I really liked the Pulpito del Diablo rock. This was Seli (the Israeli guy)’s favorite hike but he also really likes the Earth element, and there were a lot of rocks and not as much green on this trail. Again, we got as close as we could to the snow, without touching it, and even passed a few lakes of glacier-water on the way there.
Pulpito del Diablo
Jennifer, Sela (the Israeli) and me
Mostly, it was really high up, without any plants at all, and it started raining for us on the way back but we had already passed the descent of the big rocks (thank goodness) so it was just flat and plants/mud for the rain. And not much of that anyway! 😊 We arrived back and she got a Jeep to take us back to the town (despite showing up 1.5 hours late due to a flat tire) and we made it for the last bus back to Bogota. It was a really great trip although when I arrived to Bogota around 7am, I went straight to bed where I slept for about 4 hours hahaha! 😊 Apparently I needed the sleep, needed my own bed, or needed the rest from the strenuous hikes!
Anyway, that was it for our trip! I think I spent about 800k (or 700k? I’m not good with numbers) including everything (guides, food, registration/insurance, transportation, hotels, etc.) It was a good deal, a great trip, and I really liked the time with Jennifer even though I’m sad that I hadn’t met her earlier. She would have been a great travel companion because we’re so compatible, we like the same outdoor things, we both are smart and detail-oriented, and we both can easily take time off work. It’s rare that you find someone with so much compatibility – but, alas, I leave the country in two weeks and I’m not coming back for the foreseeable future. ☹
Exploring the Good Life 