Another off the beaten trek in Southern Colombia: the Purace Volcano and the Purace National Natural Park in the Department of Cauca.
This dormant volcano is 4580 meters high and yes, you can hike up to the summit in a day hike, where you will pass through the typical Colombian highland Paramo landscapes, lakes and finally up volcanic sand before reaching the summit and the crater.
There are multiple ways to do so. Maybe one of the easiest ways is to join a tour from Popayan, the closest by city. However, if you are alone and there isn´t another group already going that you can join, they told me the price was 300.000 pesos (around 100,- USD). Since I had done this trekking about three years ago as well, I knew that price was highly exaggerated and that it would be much cheaper if I would do it by myself. So I did, and though it took a little more time, it was definitely much cheaper. I did not really find any info online on how to do this though, so… I decided to write a blog about it 🙂
Leaving at 5am
The only, only bus that leaves in the direction of Purace leaves Popayan at 5am(ish). So yes, it´s an early one. I was there a bit before even, because they told me that sometimes the bus leaves a bit early. When I got there, the bus driver told me that up until now it was just me and his wife, and if not more passengers would come, he would just drive us with his own car instead of using the whole Little bus (not sure what would happen with those waiting along the road and the bus never showing up), but in the end more people appeared and the bus could go. Amongst those people was an Austrian couple that also wanted to hike up to the Summit, so we were three now 🙂
The bus takes around 2 hours to get to La Cruce de la Mina and costs 15.000 pesos. If you tell the bus driver you´re going to the Purace Volcano (not the town of Purace, because the entrance to the Park is actually 12kms further up the mountain than the town) he will jell through the bus once you get there. From there on it´s a 30 to 40 minute hike up the mountain to get to the entrance of the Purace National Park.
It is not allowed to enter the Park without a guide, but actually this is more fun anyways since he can tell you all kinds of things (if you speak Spanish) and you´re supporting the local indigenous community this week. The entrance fee for foreigners to the park is 40.000 pesos. For Colombian nationals (really only Colombians, foreigners with a Colombian ID card still count as foreigners) the entrance is 20.000. Then you need to pay the guide, which you can split between multiple people in case you manage to form a group. The guide costs 35.000 pesos, so in the case of three people, such as we were, it was around 12.000 pesos each.
The actual hike
From there on we started hiking. The beginning was fairly easy, weather was nice, it goes up steep though and since we are already starting at 3200 mts it´s not the easiest, but definitely do-able. It took us around 2.5 hours to get to what they call ´la base militar´, the military base, which is not much more than an abandoned barrack. Some tours from Popayan drive you all the way up here, since this is to where the road goes. However, the real deal is of course from the actual entrance 😉
After a little snack and drink break we continued. Now the hard part really began. Wind, cold, altitude and above all, loose volcanic sand makes this quite hard. The last half hour we were really searching for oxygen as we put three steps and had to wait for 3 minutes to catch air. And when we finally made it…. Everything was covered in clouds and rain! We were definitely a bit disappointed, all that way up, and not seeing the crater… but what can you do about it, that´s nature! But then the guide told us to just hang in there, try to stay warm (which was hard because it was seriously cold) and wait a bit. After 10 minutes, all of a sudden the clouds disappeared, the sun started warming everything up and a beautiful crater with some fumes and smoke was shown beneath us. It was absolutely amazing, and once more I was amazed by all those little surprises Pacha Mamma has for us!
After taking all kinds of pictures and just feeling the magnitude of the crater the clouds reappeared as quickly has they had gone. And with this we knew it was time to go back down. Going down was definitely so much easier than going up. However, they had told us that the only bus going back to Popayan would pass at 3pm and this time was slowly coming closer. We basically went racing down, and halfway even got attacked by a hail storm. With all of our raincoats on again we continued our way down and got to the road just 10 minutes after 3pm.
Not so reliable transporation systems
We thought we had missed the bus, but met some other people that had been waiting for an hour already back then, and actually we heard that today the bus would not really pass anymore. Uhm ok.. so much for reliable public transportation system. They told us we could walk down to the town of Purace, 12 kilometers down the road. I knew we did not have much other option, but after having hiked for 7 hours up and down a volcano I was not sure excited about this idea. But again, what choice did we have. So we started walking down. Luckily after 5kms we saw a jeep that was all stocked up with potatoes and was going down to Popayan to sell them. And yes, for a little help with the gas he definitely would be willing to take us. Ok, we were really 6 people where there is really only space for 4, but we were just too happy that we did not have to walk all the way down.
So, it is definitely possible to arrange this by yourself and I ended up spending 75.000 (plus some snacks I had bought the day before) instead of 300.000 for the tour. But, it takes some luck, getting up early and innovativeness.
Whatever you do, make sure you bring waterproof clothing and a waterproof bag in case you are bringing a camera. This is a Paramo and will always be covered in clouds and be moody and rainy. Also, bring good hiking shoes, plenty of water for a hike and snacks of course. Showing your passport at the entrance is necessary.
