Click Beetle

My first spotting on the first trail in the first protected area I visited in Colombia, Chicaque natural park. The privately owned park is only about an hour from Bogota but feels really isolated because the entrance road is very steep, winding and slippery. Some vehicles do drive it but most visitors park at the top and walk the hour to two hour hike to El Refugio, the centre of the park where there is accommodation and food. I walked the road there not knowing how bad it was and it was one of the most difficult hikes of the trip because it was so steep and I was carrying all of my gear, weighing about 20kg (45lbs). There were horses available to go back up and I'm not ashamed to say I took one on the way back. I was not walking that road again with all my stuff! I still had to wear my pack but it rested on the horse's back. It was still even a bit scary on the horse because he just walked wherever he wanted and there was about 10 visitors on horses going back up at the same time. Sometimes they would slip and try to walk in the rain gutter for better traction but that usually resulted in vegetation hitting me in the face, but they got me back to the top. Chicaque isn't a large park nor does it have that many trails but I stayed 5 days anyway, just hiking the trails very slowly. The park is a small chunk of extremely biodiverse cloud forest above 2000m.