The Peñol Stone: the rock that started a war, drowned a town, and became Colombia’s most surprising climb

The Peñol Stone (also called Piedra del Peñol or El Peñón de Guatapé) is a granite boulder the size of a skyscraper, sitting in the middle of a Colombian lake full of islands, about two hours outside Medellín. Locals call it two different names, depending on which side of an old feud they grew up on. There’s an unfinished letter painted on its face that a mob once stopped mid-brushstroke. And beneath the water surrounding it lies an entire town, church tower and all.

It might be the most dramatic backstory attached to any staircase on Earth.

Most travelers know the Peñol Stone as “that rock near Guatapé with all the steps.” Fair enough, there are 740 of them. But the real reason to visit isn’t the climb. It’s everything the climb is standing on top of.

A 10-million-ton boulder that geologists still find remarkable

Piedra del Peñol is what’s called an inselberg, essentially a “mountain island”: a chunk of rock so dense and fracture-resistant that it refused to erode while everything around it wore away over millions of years. It formed 65 to 90 million years ago, during the same tectonic upheavals that shaped the Andes, and it’s made of the same granite batholith running underneath the region (quartz, feldspar, and mica, tightly bound together).

The numbers alone are worth knowing before you go:

• 220 meters tall from its base (about 721 feet)
• 2,135 meters above sea level at the summit
• Estimated to weigh more than 10 million tons
• Erodes at roughly 0.0024 to 0.24 millimeters per year, which is almost nothing
• Extends another 1 to 2.5 kilometers underground, meaning what you see is only a fraction of the whole thing

It’s so isolated at the top that scientists exploring it after the first climb found a plant species nobody had documented before, a bromeliad now known as Pitcairnia heterophylla. An entire ecosystem, evolving quietly on top of a rock most people only visit for the view.

The priest who dared the town to climb it

For centuries, the Tahamí people who lived in the region considered the rock sacred, calling it Mojarrá, simply “the stone,” and treating it as a spiritual landmark tied to sun worship and seasonal ritual. After Spanish colonization pushed the Tahamí out, the rock’s meaning flipped entirely. To 19th and 20th century farmers, it was just a useless slab of granite blocking cattle paths.

Then, in 1954, a parish priest named Alfonso Montoya got tired of it. During a 40-hour patron saint sermon, he needled the men of the town, saying “toads do not climb stones” (los sapos no suben a las piedras), practically daring someone to prove him wrong.

Three men took the bait: Luis Eduardo Villegas López, Pedro Nel Ramírez, and Ramón Díaz. With no climbing gear, they wedged wooden poles into a natural crack running up the rock’s north face and spent five days working their way to the top. When they reached the summit on July 16, 1954, they raised a shirt on a stick so the valley below could see they’d made it.

Villegas, sensing an opportunity, bought the rock and surrounding land from farmers who thought it was worthless. He built wooden ladders, charged a small fee, and started what’s now a full tourism economy. His family still owns and operates the site today, even though the Colombian government declared it a National Monument back in the 1940s. Private land, public landmark: a strange but very Colombian arrangement.

The graffiti war nobody finished

Here’s where it gets interesting. The rock legally sits within Guatapé’s town limits, but the neighboring town of El Peñol has claimed it for generations, citing older land grants and simple proximity. The result is a rock with two names: Guatapé calls it El Peñón de Guatapé, El Peñol calls it La Piedra del Peñol, and nobody’s backing down.

In the late 1980s, a group from Guatapé decided to settle the argument the loud way. They climbed up with paint and started brushing the town’s name, GUATAPÉ, across the rock’s western face in letters 30 meters tall, visible from the highway.

They got through the “G” and a single vertical stroke of the “U” before a furious crowd from El Peñol showed up and shut the whole thing down. Heritage protection laws stepped in afterward, banning any further painting on the monument. So the half-finished letters are still there today, looking vaguely like a “G” and an “I,” a permanent, accidental monument to a rivalry that never really ended.

What’s actually underneath the reservoir

The lake surrounding the rock, the one filled with islands and lakeside villas, isn’t natural. In the late 1960s, Colombia’s public utility company, EPM, dammed the Negro-Nare river basin to build a hydroelectric complex that today still generates roughly a third of the country’s electricity.

Building it meant flooding more than 6,000 hectares of farmland, and with it, the entire historic town of El Peñol. Residents fought back with strikes and protests, eventually forcing EPM to sign a 95-clause agreement protecting their homes and livelihoods. EPM broke most of those promises. Housing plans excluded single people, widows, and the elderly. Long-standing communities were split apart. More than 1,000 graves had to be dug up and moved before the water rose in April 1979.

Today, a stone pillar topped with a metal cross marks the spot directly above the drowned church spire, floating quietly on the surface as a memorial. The old village doctor’s house is the only building still standing above the waterline. And on the shore, a rebuilt version called Réplica del Viejo Peñol recreates the plaza, the church, and the colorful painted facades of the town that’s now underwater, part memorial, part open-air museum, part very photogenic tourist stop.

It’s a heavier story than most travel write-ups mention, but it’s worth knowing before you look out over that lake from the summit. What looks like a paradise of islands and boat tours used to be someone’s home.

Climbing the 740 steps (what to actually expect)

Now, the practical part.

• Total steps: 740 to reach the highest platform (649 up the rock itself, 91 more inside the lookout tower at the top). Some signs and older guides mention 640 or 659, but that number only gets you to the base of the tower, not the top.
• Time: 15 to 30 minutes up, 15 to 20 minutes down, depending on fitness and how many photo breaks you take.
• Cost: 30,000 COP (about $8 USD), cash only. No cards accepted at the gate.
• Hours: 8 AM to 6 PM daily.
• Traffic flow: The staircase is split into two separate one-way lanes, one for climbing, one for descending, so you’re not fighting people coming down.
• Rest stops: Flat landings roughly every 100 steps, painted yellow milestone numbers, and two staffed first-aid stations (one at the base, one halfway up next to a small shrine to the Virgin Mary).
• Altitude note: You’re starting above 2,000 meters, so the air is noticeably thinner. Take it slow rather than rushing, especially in the first few hundred steps.

At the top, the reward is a 360-degree view of the reservoir’s maze of islands and inlets, plus a summit tradition that’s become almost as famous as the climb itself: the mango michelada. Ice-cold beer or malt drink, salt-rimmed glass, fresh lime, sliced green mango. Best drink you’ll have after 740 steps, guaranteed.

Best time to go

Skip weekends if you can. Tuesday through Thursday mornings see a fraction of the crowd, roughly 30 to 50 people at the summit compared to 200 to 300 on a busy Saturday. Arrive right at 8 AM. Large tour buses from Medellín don’t usually roll in until 9:30 or 10:30, so that early window is your best shot at a quiet climb and clean photos.

Beyond the rock: what to pair it with

Most travelers treat Piedra del Peñol as a stop on the way to Guatapé, the colorful lakeside town just a few kilometers further. It’s worth the extra time. Nearly every building is decorated with zócalos, brightly painted plaster reliefs depicting the family’s history or trade, and wandering the Calle del Recuerdo or the waterfront malecón is its own kind of photo tour.

A few other things worth working into the day:

• Boat tours, the best way to actually understand the scale of the reservoir. A typical tour winds through narrow channels between islands and private lakeside villas, passing the ruined shell of La Manuela, the estate once owned by Pablo Escobar and bombed by rival vigilantes in 1993, now a hollow, overgrown structure you view from the water. Most routes also pass close to the floating memorial cross marking the drowned church spire below, and give you a clear look at the “fingers” of land that make this lake look nothing like a normal reservoir from above. It’s worth doing for the scale alone: from the water, you get a sense of just how much land disappeared in the 1970s flooding, something you can’t fully grasp from the summit. Trips typically run 45 minutes to an hour and can be booked as shared or private charters right from the Guatapé waterfront.
• Trout (trucha), the region’s signature dish, usually grilled or baked and served with a giant fried plantain (patacón).
• Water sports, jet skis, paddleboards, and kayaks for exploring the lake’s channels.
• Lakeside stays, for travelers who want more than a day trip. Options range from budget-friendly guesthouses to glamping domes with private plunge pools overlooking the water.

Why this belongs on your Colombia itinerary

Piedra del Peñol gets pitched online as a quick day trip from Medellín, and it works fine as one. But knowing the story behind it changes the visit completely. You’re not just climbing a rock for a view. You’re climbing a monument to a decades-old rivalry, standing above a submerged town that never fully recovered, and looking out over a reservoir that powers a third of a country.

Few destinations pack a geology lesson, a ghost story, a feud, and a genuinely spectacular view into a single afternoon. The Peñol Stone does, and it’s still one of Colombia’s most underrated stops for exactly that reason.

Several of Exoticca’s Colombia travel packages already include an excursion to the Peñol Stone and Guatapé, either built into the trip or available as an optional add-on, so you don’t need to plan the logistics yourself. Explore Exoticca’s Colombia itineraries and see how easily this hidden gem fits into a bigger adventure.