[ Dec.2016 ] There was a picture of Guatape in the brochure of the travel agency and when I saw it, I really wanted to visit and see this place.
That was the beginning of our Colombian holiday.
So I was looking forward to visiting this town, but I found it rather like a big kindergarten.
This is a town called Guatape, which we visited as an excursion from Medellin.
After seeing the main church, we took the Mototaxi and went around the town.
The main feature of this town was that every house had some colourful patterns and pictures at the lower part of the wall.
These patterns or pictures are called Zocalo and they call this town Pueblo de Zocalos (town of Zocalos).
According to our guide, Maria, one person started carving some sheep on his wall in 1920 and other people started copying him with various patterns.
At first they chose typical subjects such as sheep and flowers, but they escalated to depicting their job, hobbies and so on.
And they seemed to love to use primary colours like children’s paintings.
We even saw a wall with the pictures of one person’s whole life.
There was a wall of a pet dog, too.
It is true that even in the rainy days like the day we were there, the town looked cheerful, but to be honest it looked rather childish.
I started wondering that the photograph of the brochure was very old and the place was not existing any more, but then we came across this slope.
Here it was not only pretty, but really nice and quaint.
The place we got off the Mototaxi was a new square which was created only two years ago.
Many tourists and hippie-like foreigners were hanging around there.
We sat at a table on the corner of this square and had a cup of coffee.
Maria told us that Pablo (Pablo Escobar) had a villa around here, but after his death, the villa was looted thoroughly.
That is because Pablo used to hide his money in the walls or under the floors of the villa.
By the way, according to our guide book, there are some tours to visit places remembered in connection with Pablo.
Apparently there is a sort of safari park where his pet hippo and other exotic animals are living.
I recommend: “Things to do in Guatape”
