Piedra del Peñol Staircase, Guatapé, Antioquia, Colombia
© Anamaria Mejia/Shutterstock
Whose rock is it anyway?
The last century of this lone stone hulk's 65 million years has brought some changes—and that staircase running up its side like stitches on a baseball is just one of them. Visitors who climb 700-plus steps to the top of El Peñón de Guatapé are rewarded with a view over the flooded valley below, a tangle of countless inlets, straits, and bays that came about in the 1970s when a hydroelectric dam was built. Forced to higher ground, the nearby towns of Guatapé and El Peñol soon developed a rocky rivalry: On the other side of the rock, a prominent graffito seeming to read 'GI' remains after a Guatapé denizen attempted to brand it for his hometown—only for El Peñol residents to stop him before he finished writing the 'U.'
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