After almost 3 weeks living in apartments in big busy cities, staying in our home and in the nature was all we needed. We stayed in our first camp spot in Colombia for two days and planned our route after talking to the farm owners, a retired British couple who moved to Colombia and called it home for the last decade.
In January 2025, while we were dealing with the logistics of shipping the car to Colombia, there was a big conflict between Farc and the Colombian army close to the Venezuelan border. Lots of people in the area got killed or injured and we weren’t sure, how if affects our route in Colombia. In Mid February when we started driving, we were keen to hear from the locals about the severity of the situation. After talking to few including the people at campsite, we decided not to take the risk and avoid certain parts of Colombia despite the fact, that we really wanted to visit them.
We planned our route directly toward south and the city of Medellin instead of the eastern mountains close to Venezuelan border. After filling up our water tank and stock up on grocery we were so ready to skip the heat and explore some Colombian off the beaten path routes in higher elevations.
After a long day of driving, we stayed behind a community pool with lots of banana trees and called it home for the night. It was still hot and humid and we were looking forward to reaching the mountains.
The following day was a Sunday and our plan was reaching a small town called San Roque and find a camp spot close to the town.
We arrived at San Roque around lunch time and thanks to Google map we drove right into the town narrow streets and eventually the main Plaza. It was an overwhelming experience in a good way and in a bad way at the same time. Narrow street reminded us of Guatemala, we could hardly turn and follow google route. There were lots of motorbike and horses around the main plaza and bars and restaurants were packed with locals having beer and lunch. Music was loud and lively and while we were desperate to get out of the chaos with the car, we were itching to walk back and join the crowd and enjoy the lively vibe! Apart from the vibe, the architecture was so beautiful that it was hard to believe that it is just a remote town off the touristic path in Colombia.
After an stressful drive through a tiny busy town, we found a dirt road that was next to a beautiful river and supposed to take us to a very secluded camp site. We finally found a spot. It was pretty much a local swimming spot next to the river were a kind family were running and we could camp alongside the river in their property for few dollars. They also had a small shop and restaurant. Being a Sunday, they had a big fire on with a huge steaming pot on it. Before we settle down the owner asked me to follow him and check the pot! It was a hearty homemade stew bubbling in it with lots of meat and vegetable. He was so proud of his creation and we were starving so we found a beautiful spot next to river to set up camp and walked back to the entrance to have a local lunch. There were lots of locals that already did the swim and were enjoying a cold beer and the only stew that was on the menu with rice and fried banana which is very common as far as we learned in the last few days in Colombia.
The lunch was great but we were so full after lunch and didn’t have the will to walk back to the town center and decided to hang out by the river and enjoy the beautiful landscape.
We sat back and relaxed for the rest of the day. We finally reached the cooler climate were it was pleasant to sit outside and still warm enough to go for a swim in the river. We loved the vibe of the place, the kindness of the owners and were keen to go and explore the town too so we decided to stay for two days and see how we feel after that.
The next morning, we walked the dirt road alongside the river toward the town. The weather was beautiful and the small farms along the road looked pristine. They were looking just too perfect. It looked like there were from a movie scene.
The presence of the horses were the other highlights. A lot of people were going up and down the road on horses and there were at least one or two horses in the houses backyards.
All the accessories on horses, like saddles were all beautifully designed and were amazing to watch.
We didn’t realized that we walked for half an hour to reach the main plaza of San Roque.
It wasn’t as busy as Sunday but there were still lots of people around. Exploring the city on foot, we could see all the intricate details of the town. It was hard to comprehend the beauty of a place where people were calling home. It looked like it is out of a fairy tale.
We were intrigued with the beauty of the place knowing that it is the real life going on here. It wasn’t a touristic place with beautiful facade for people to take photos. That was local people’s lifestyle! We just loved San Roque. The camp was great, the town was just perfect! People were super nice, kind and friendly and it was so good that we felt that we don’t want to leave.
We sat in a local bar in the plaza and had a cold local beer and watch the slow pace of the peaceful life there.
Our stay in San Roque was awesome and set the tone for our adventures in Colombia. Beautiful authentic places, kind and generous people, great food and awesome prices. We were so ready to see more of it.
It was hard to leave this spot, but we had so much more to see in Colombia. The next spot on our way was a touristic hotspot, El Penon and Guatape. The drive on the narrow windy roads toward Guatape was beautiful and picture perfect.
The Guatape was busy with lots of tourists and it was filled with beautiful colorful buildings like San Roque but it didn’t have the charm! Packed with lots of restaurants with bad food and high prices, we didn’t like it at all. El Penon is a massive granite monolith which you can climb to the top and offers a great view of the beautiful surrounding area. It is a major landmark in Colombia and a very popular tourist hotspot in the region. It is also very close to Medellin and its accessibility is playing a big factor in its popularity. While we enjoyed watching it from the distance, the whole area didn;t sound interesting enough to us and we decided to move on.
We found a dreamy camp spot away from the busy Guatape, next to the lake with the view of El Penon in the distance that we planned to stay but after checking the safety of the spot and talking to some nice locals, we decided against it.
We drove out of the Guatape toward Medellin and parked in a the parking area of one of the giants tourist bus stops along the way.
There were lots of spots like this outside Guatape, a big complex with restaurants, supermarket and souvenir shops where overwhelming number of tourist buses stop.
We stayed at one that we liked and even though it looked like an emergency one night stop along the way, we really enjoyed it. We made friends with the car park guard and had interesting conversations with our broken Spanish with him and had lots of visitors that were keen to check our car. The local food from the restaurant was really good and we tried some of the delicious local delicacies.
From there we continued south toward the Medellin. After few weeks in big cities, we weren’t mentally prepared for another big city so we stayed in the outskirt of Medellin in the nice camp site in the mountains for few days. We had a quick stop in Medellin to buy some spare parts for the car and it took us the whole day to drive out of the city on our way south.
From Medellin, we planned an interesting windy mountain route to visit some beautiful spots in Colombia. We’ll get to this in the next post. So far we love Colombia! It is beautiful, raw, kind and exciting and we are keen for more of it.
