Chingaza- Wilderness on Bogota's doorstep

One February weekend, Cath and I decided to trade decadent Bogotá life for camping at 3,600 metres.  The destination was Chingaza National Park, only 30 miles east of Bogotá’s suburbs.  We went with a walking group that we had travelled with a few times before, Viajar y Vivir (Travel and Live).

Most of our friends thought we were brave, but slightly mad to be camping in near-freezing temperatures.  Most were polite enough to simply arch their eyebrows and avert their gazes when they heard our plans, while one of my Australian mates was much blunter.  ‘You’re an idiot,’ he scoffed when I mentioned I would be eschewing our usual weekend revels just to see a few deer and some mountains you could glimpse from any window in the city. 

Regardless, we went ahead with the trip.  We left early on Saturday morning, and somewhere just outside of the city centre, we stopped for some arepas, which are corn cakes cooked on a griddle.  They’re very popular in Colombia, but God alone knows why. They range in taste from ´Dry Shoe Sole´ to ´There’s enough butter on this I suppose it isn’t so bad´. 

Don't be deceived by how delicious they look

 The staffroom at our school provided snacks at break time each morning, and there was an easy way to tell if arepas were being served: if all the expats walked out grumbling and empty-handed while the Colombian teachers were celebrating as if they were on The Price is Right, it could only mean one thing.  Maybe I’m being harsh, because I have had good arepas before (including the ones on this trip).  But when I can distinctly remember the two or three good ones out of dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts, then maybe they ought to rethink the recipe. 

Anyway, after finishing our arepas and hot chocolate with cheese (I’ll have to tackle that one later), the bus wound its way through the mountains east of town, and within an hour or so, we entered the national park.  We stopped at a viewpoint above a deep valley full of frailejones (see the Nevados entry for an explanation) and surrounded by mountains that resembled books that had fallen on to each other. It was here we made our first wildlife spotting.  

Chingaza is known for its white-tailed deer, and we soon saw why.  Far below us in the bottom of the valley, dozens of them were running around for no apparent reason.  I’d like to think they were racing each other to a previously nominated frailejon, but sadly I’ll never know.  

Cath inspects a frailejon up close

We arrived at the campsite and set up our tents and had some lunch, during which Cath and I struck up a conversation with the family next to ours.  One of the big advantages of travelling with Viajar y Vivir, besides having travel arranged to out of the way places, was getting to meet new people.  Even better, few of them spoke English, so we were able to practice our Spanish.   We used how much we understood of Leo- the usual guide for Viajar- as a barometer for our comprehension skills. On our first excursion with them, taken 2 months after we moved to Colombia, we were pretty poor (although I think we fooled ourselves and others into thinking we understood by nodding pensively), but by now we could probably catch more than half of what he said, which we considered a minor victory.

In this case, we shared a few lunch items with each other, and the couple encouraged their shy daughter- about 11- to utilize this rare opportunity to practice her English. She sighed reluctantly, asked a few basic questions, and got back to her food. 

In the afternoon we took a walk to the showpiece of the park, the Chingaza Reservoir.  This is the main water source for most of Bogotá, but I was struck by how small it was.  It wasn’t tiny or anything, but considering it provided nearly 8 million people with water, I had expected it to be Titicaca-like.

Chingaza Reservoir is big, but not that big

 Like so many places in Colombia, Chingaza has its own connection to the country’s civil war.  In 2002, the rebel army FARC tried to dynamite a dam in the reservoir in order to cut off the city’s water, part of a larger attempt to derail the country’s infrastructure.  Fortunately, they were unsuccessful, and now the area is completely safe. 

On Sunday morning, we became more acquainted with Chingaza’s only current residents (besides the park ranger).  The deer seemed to be appearing out of every corner of the woods.  It’s a good thing deer hunting doesn’t seem to be a big deal in Colombia, because these deer were about as shy as a drunk divorcee.  We were happy enough to do our shooting with a camera.

This guy better be glad he came up to me and not my Uncle Robert

 Not many Colombians visit Chingaza, and almost no foreigners visit it.  It’s not in the guidebooks, and, truth be told, it isn’t in the top ten of spectacular sights in the country.  It was a great way, however, to experience wilderness just an hour away from one of the biggest cities in the world, and we were both very glad we’d come.  Even if it meant missing out on a wild Saturday night in Bogotá.