If you take your car or a bus from Bogotá, in 1-2 hours you can reach any of the small towns near the city. One of my favorites is Suesca, a place known by climbers from all over the country. With over 2.5 km of rock and 500 routes, Suesca is a climber's dream.
Climbing is a sport where you become a kid again and go to the rock to play. There are no rules, especially on the rock. Everyone designs their own route to get to the top (according to their height, strength, flexibility and technique).
I've been climbing for a little over a year now and my experience in Suesca is always different. I enjoy climbing on rock more than on an artificial wall. I like the feel of the air, not having to wear a face mask - now that we are in a pandemic - the sensation of the cold rock in your hands and how different it feels to the plastic holds in the city, the fact that you are much more present and the fact that you are in the open air, because your partner's life is in your hands, and feeling very small compared to the rock and seeing that your problems are also very small.
Suesca is a place I will always want to return to. In these photos, I went with some of my friends to Suesca. We climbed a route called La Rosa Espinosa and it's a 5.10. We were all just starting out so we only did the route half way up. It was a route that felt very safe most of the time but it had a bit of a scary part where you had to step backwards off the rock a bit to see the next hold. At the top, just before you got there, you had to grab a very thin ledge and from there hold on to pull your feet up to the rock, this required a lot of arm strength and I couldn't do it. I had to use a rope that was there to help me almost at the end of the route. It is very common to be left with that bad feeling of not having been able to complete a route and that day it was like that. I want to go back to this route and complete it next time.
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