Colombia is filled with a lot of amazing hikes and views. I would like to share some stuff about the hikes and views we are experiencing. So far we have gone on 8 hikes. And if you look and see that this post gets re-posted you will know that I am adding another hike.

Our first hike was three days after we got here. We met Jose who lives in Florida but grew up in La Mesa. He led us on this hike and we were lucky to meet him. It was a cooler hike because is started higher up the mountain from La Mesa. It was misty the whole day. We didn’t quite make it to the waterfall because it was raining too much. We think the waterfall was actually flowing a good amount if we would have made it there. This hike was kind of like a rain forest environment. Our shoes were very wet when we came back after crossing a stream several times.

Our second hike started in La Mesa. There is a path to another town that we hiked on. It takes you through a wooded and very rural area. We didn’t make it all the way to the town though because we didn’t know how long the hike was.

Our next hike was a Sunday morning before church. Church starts at 10am so we have some extra time. We hiked El Palmar with some friends from Pennsylvania, La Mesa and Venezuela. This hike was a good workout because it was steep down and also coming back up.

Our fourth hike was to another waterfall. We took a bus to the start of the hike and walked the rest. We went with the same group from the last hike. It was a shorter and relaxing hike until the end when it got hotter and steeper. The destination was a waterfall with a nice place to swim at the bottom. This hike was lots of fun because of the waterfall and swimming.

The next hike started in La Mesa and was the same trail as our second hike. We tried to get all the way to the small town this time. It was mostly down hill, which made it easier, but it was several miles long. At one point we wondered if we were lost because the road got small and it felt like we were deep in the woods. We eventually saw some people and they said we were headed in the right direction. When we finally got to the town of San Javier we asked around about a river that looked nearby on the map. After some refreshments at the local tienda, we hiked down to the river and swam. This was a long hike, so we took a bus back to La Mesa after we were done swimming. It was also uphill going back!

Our next hike was with our church youth group to another town. This was a long day of hiking. We think it was 8 miles! We hiked to the same town as the last hike, but we went a different and longer way. It had some cool views too. When we got to San Javier, we played around an old train turn table. We were told there are only a handful of these in all of Colombia. Kellen didn’t want to hike back up to La Mesa, so he took a bus back with Dad. The rest of us hiked up a more direct trail to La Mesa. It was very steep but much shorter.

Our seventh hike was a couple weeks ago to the same waterfall we tried to get to back in June on our first hike. Jose was back in town, so he took us again. This time we made it to the waterfall! Unfortunately it has been very dry here, so there was only mist coming over the waterfall. That also made it beautiful though. After making some missteps, I came back with wet and muddy shoes. This was a tough hike too and it has some really different terrain such as plains, mountains and rain forest. Very many cool views!

Our last hike was yesterday, and we went back to San Javier. We hiked on the same path as our fifth hike. Most of this hike is deep in the woods and is very peaceful. We have some random family conversations on these hikes. We stopped once and watched a huge ant colony traveling over a bridge to figure out what they were doing and where they lived. We made it down to the river and realized everyone had tennis shoes on except Dad. Taylor still went swimming in her shoes. Kellen and I spent our time scaling the huge volcanic rocks and got our shoes wet accidentally. Then we rode a bus back to La Mesa.

I am also sharing some other amazing views in La Mesa and other places around us. These were not from hikes though.