In this post I want to tell you about another of the incredible experiences I have had with Spanish school Nueva Lengua (Bogota): our trip to La Chorrera in Choachi.

We made this into a day trip, leaving early on a Saturday and returning in the evening. We traveled in Nueva Lengua’s own tour bus, and the entirety of the excursion cost about 80.000 pesos (about 27 usd). This included travel, a private tour of the park or basically guided hikes up/around the mountain, and lunch between the two hikes.

The most magnificent part of this trip was “La Cascada,” or the tallest waterfall in Colombia, measuring 590 meters (or 1936 feet for my friends from the U.S.A.). When we first arrived at the park, we could briefly see the waterfall from faaaaar away, and it honestly just looked like a big white line through the trees. As we continued on with our first hike, we were able to see the waterfall getting closer and closer, until we were upon it. You can more or less see this in the pictures I’m attaching to the post.

The basic structure of the trip was as follows: an introduction video upon arrival, where we learned a little bit about the history of the waterfall and how tall it was relative to others in Colombia, the first guided hike up the mountain with kind of stations and someone to explain the significance of each station, seeing the view and touching the waterfall, the hike back down for lunch, a smaller hike BEHIND one of the smaller waterfalls at the park, and the squeaky walk back to the bus for the drive home (about an hour and 30 minutes from the school).

Unfortunately for us, although it did give us many laughs, it had been raining heavily the day before we went. And anyone who has hiked before, or walked through nature shortly after a heavy rainfall knows that when water and dirt meet, you get mud…lots of mud. Considering our hike to the waterfall was obviously uphill, you can imagine how muddy and wet we all were by the time we finished. I myself slipped and fell in a HUGE area of wet, squishy mud, and ended up literally putting my entire foot and shoe in the river to clean it off. Walking with wet socks was not super fun either, however it ended up not making much of a difference since one of our guides expected us to cross a river by hopping from rock to rock on our second hike. Naturally, I slipped on one of the rocks and landed in the river…at least my shoes were clean. For this reason, if any of you decide to partake in this trip, or any other trip where you think you might end up hiking, TAKE A FRESH PAIR OF SOCKS IN YOUR BAG! The trip back to Bogota with soggy shoes, socks, and pruny feet was less than pleasant. I would also suggest bringing a good rain jacket, because at times it started to sprinkle, and anytime you’re going near a waterfall, you’re bound to get wet. And when you get wet, you get cold. Very cold. So potentially also wear thick-ish pants and bring/wear a sweater.

In general, it was an amazing trip, and definitely worth the messy laundry day that happened on Sunday

This article was originally written in English