Lost And Searching: Story of our life: "we're closed"

On our second day we wanted to go hiking to the 2 highest waterfalls in Colombia, La Chorrera and El Chiflon. According to the information on the internet, you should go to Choachi and from there on you can walk to the entrance of the parc. Wrong.

But first, let me tell you how choosing left in stead of right had brought us in a very unsafe situation. It should have been easy... We needed to take 1 bus (Transmilenio) and get of at 'Tercer Milenio'. Just around the corner of the busstation, after the police station, we could find a buscompany that could bring us to Choachi in 1,5 hours.

Important note: Tercer Milenio is a parc where you should not come! Every 5m there is police and every 5m there is a homeless guy or worse. We were warned for this parc and had received clear instructions not to place a footstep inside or we would get robbed or worse.

We got of the busstation at this parc and mistakenly took the wrong exit towards the street. Now, guess where we ended up in? Uhu, right! F*** I almost shit my pants! (excuse the language but it was really scary!) While looking for the right street, we had to pass by the parc to the other side (which was also wrong, but at that time brains were not functioning any more, so reading a map was a big failure). People were looking at us as if they saw aliens. They were either thinking "what the hell are those crazy tourist doing here?!" or maybe "hm, wonder what's in their bags". One guy shouted someting at us, I couldn't really understand what he said, but for sure no friendly greeting! Emergency getaway action: take first street to the left.

We came across a local market. People screaming at each other, carrying big trashbags filled with whatever... I don't think they get to see a lot of tourist over there, by the look on their face.

We asked a policeman for directions and the first thing he says is: "what are you doing here?! Es muy peligroso!" He instructed us to cross the street and walk there, that would be somewhat safer. We crossed the street and jumped in a cab! I didn't want to spend any second more in that neighbourhood. When I saw my face in the rear mirror, it looked as if I had seen a ghost, so scared!

Challenge nr 2: asking people where the parc was and how to get there. Most of them didn't knew... Finally we found a guy that was aware, but he told us that today we couldn't go, that there wouldn't be a guide. It was closed. Pffffffff! We went through all that trouble for nothing?!

"No, you can go to the 'Thermales'", he said. Well, that sounded as music to my ears. I needed to relax, so this was perfect! For about €8 we even took a 30min massage! That was the best thing about the 'Thermales', because half of the facilities were closed...half of the pools were even empty! Just our luck!

The next day we were going to go paragliding off a hill above a lake. The view was going to be amazing! We could combine this with a trip to the salt cathedral and salt mine in Zipaquira (all north of Bogota). All public transportation went smoothly, we were so proud! I even made the reservation for the paragliding in Spanish!

But once we arrived on top of the hill, where it was going to 'happen', they told us that the weather conditions were not good and that we couldn't fly... Are you kidding me?? Again?!

When we arrived in Zipaquira, we climbed our way up to the salt cathedral. We took a guided tour and learned about the region and about the extraction of salt. Unfortunately, by the time we exited the cathedral, it was already too late to also go visit the salt mine about 30mins away from Zipaquira.

If you ever want to go to La Chorrera, traveling from Bogota, make sure you tell the busdriver to drop you off at La Victoria. This is 20mins before reaching Choachi. We had to learn this the hard way. We were dropped off again in Choachi and some guy could finally give us good instructions this time. So we hopped on the bus again, in the other direction, meaning: back to Bogota, where we were just coming from. I was surprised the locals know so little about these waterfalls!

We you get dropped off in La Victoria, at the sign of 'La Chorrera', walk along the road that goes steeply down towards the entrance to the parc. This hike takes more than 1 hour! On the way you see a beautiful scenery, a few houses, 2 small shops where you can fill up on water and lots of dogs. Barking dogs, dogs that follow you, the kind that makes me look for a big stick to carry around as protection.

I was somewhat disappointed, because according to their policy you cannot enter without a guide. I assumed because it is dangerous and you need protection from horrible monsters. Liesje doesn't care that much for rules, so she wanted to go anyway. We followed. Jelle started talking about snakes and spiders and one time he really scared us, making us believe right in front was a snake. I don't like these kind of mindgames, they turn me paranoia. So after some climbing, when reaching a viewpoint that was closed of course (so we couldn't see anything), I changed my mind....I had it with all of this! I didn't want to go furhter, what would be the point?! Climbing even higher to get disappointed again? No thank you.

We hiked all the way back to the main road and waited for the bus to take us back to Bogota. In the meantime we treated ourselves with a beer. We earned this one!