Laguna Guatavita
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2007
1
45
332
Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Bogota,
Colombia
Friday, April 6, 2007
The lake is about 2 hours north of Bogota, and in theory a peaceful place. But that is not on Good Friday, when peaceful would be the last adjective to use. It is a lovely freshwater lake surrounded by a ring of hills, and was a sacred place to the Muisca people in pre-Colombian times. To get there you need to use the Transmilenio bus service to Portal Norte then get a Guatavita bus. You need to get dropped off at the end of the road into the reserve 11km before the town of Guatavita, then there is a 7km uphill walk. A group of Colombians started off the walk with us, but when the rain started in earnest and a minibus magically came by, they hopped in. We tramped all the way up, and during periods when the rain held off it was very enjoyable. Meanwhile car after car overtook us, and we were expecting half the population of Bogota to be at the lake.
Pic 1
Staff had the huge crowd well organised. You got your entry pass (we didn't pay anything as we are over 60, but the usual cost is 12,000 pesos for foreigners), and were told which time to join a group. Our group had about 40 people, so you needed to keep close to the guide in order to hear anything. The tour takes you up a fairly steep but well-paved path to get a views of the lake, but you are not allowed anywhere near the water. They are trying to restore the habitat in the hope that animals like the fox, deer and condor will return. Then it was all over and we were out of the reserve. Our advice if you want to go there is to choose a midweek day that is not a public holiday, to avoid the crowds and high-speed tour. It would have been much nicer without all those tourists !The route downhill was much quicker than up, because we were shown a shortcut. At the bottom we decided to walk the 6km back to the small town of Sequile past the reservoir that drowned the original town of Guatavita. You could not see much of the water, but we did see thousands of Australian Black Wattle that lined the roadsides. If they are not already a pest plant they must be well on the way. Sequile had a few nice buildings and a huge 50-year-old brick church. This is the only time we have seen a church full to overflowing, for a Good Friday Mass, so we missed seeing the inside.
Note on the Transmilenio buses
Bogota abandoned the idea of a Metro some years ago and installed the Transmilenio
Pic 2
. This consists of very long buses running in their own lanes, with limited stops, and only held up by traffic lights. There are about 8 different routes. But it is far more complicated than any Metro. Several bus routes may be on the same road, but they stop at different places. Each stop has 3 sections, and IF your desired bus stops at this stop you have to find the right section. Spaces between the sections are in the open air and let the rain soak you. The timetable for each route depends on the day of the week, the time of day, and if it is a public holiday, and the only timetables are stuck up in the stations. Suffice it to say, your chances of getting on a wrong bus are very high, as are your chances of seeing your bus whizzing past because you are waiting in the wrong section of a station, or your chance of speeding through your desired station without stopping because you picked bus J95 instead of B1. All this said, once mastered it is certainly quicker than the usual little buses that stop everywhere.
