Rest Sunday - Visit to the Bosque Popular El Prado Manizales

Hey friends how are you, my last weekend was amazing, I traveled to many really cool places, among them a Nevado Volcano located in the National Natural Park Nevados del Ruiz, besides that I went to the city of Manizales and toured much of this beautiful city, from downtown, the surroundings and the coolest thing a popular Eco Park, where all families gather on Sundays to perform various family activities, the park has volleyball courts, motocross track, bike cross, bbq area, swimming pool, places to train your pets (dogs), among other things.
I woke up very early on Sunday because the trip is very long and tiring, at 5:30am I was waiting for the bus that would take me to the city of Manizales to meet my brother and there would begin our journey.

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Although the first place I visited was the Volcano, I want to talk more about the park, because compared to my hometown, this park is 3 times bigger, with more people, more attractions for activities and of course with a very noticeable surveillance and police presence.
From the first moment we entered the park we could see the amount of vehicles from the entrance to the end, between cars and motorcycles, there were countless, in addition to seeing the families who attended in cabs or on foot.

Of course that called my attention completely because it is a completely different world, for such a small city with a population 5 times smaller than mine. Inside the same park there was an old train, referring to the old Caldas railroad that passed through all the towns of the coffee axis with larger cities for example, Chinchiná, Manizales, Villamaria, Pereira, etc, where goods and people were transported.

Walking just a little we could already see the recreational areas, the volleyball courts, tennis courts, Olympic pools and family pools, the entrance to the sports courts is free, but the pools you have to pay a fee of approximately 6mil pesos (1.5$) per person for the family pool, the Olympic pool requires more permits and money.
However, I believe that there are sports associations that use these areas to practice and besides that there are professional games between players. I am not clear if anyone can arrive and play with the people present or if they must take turns to use the area.

For children there are sand areas, slides, castle-type houses and they can be there with their parents, and there are also recreational activities where children over 5 years old can participate, such as word games, dance therapies and games with clowns.

Something that I found funny is the amount of dogs that run loose in the park, obviously their owners let them walk, but it is funny to see so many dogs together walking as normal as if it were their home.

I wanted to practice motocross, and we decided to go to the track that has the park, for this we had to go down from the top of the mountain through a forest to the lower part, where the bbq areas are and we saw how they were cooking and grilling, we passed next to the bike track and soccer fields. When we arrived there was no one practicing on the track, because it was very wet because it had rained, but my brother wanted to try his bike for a while, although it is not a motocross bike, it is enduro and has enough strength.

Now it was time to go to know the center of Manizales, I wanted to visit the Cathedral here, and see the center of Manizales which is the most beautiful and attractive of the city, the structures, the colonial style streets are really beautiful, besides that here are the most beautiful buildings. The Cathedral is a tourist attraction, there is something called Polish Corridor which is a kind of spiral stairs that go up to the top of the church and from there you can see the whole city, it has a cost of 13mil pesos (3.25$) and the tour is 1h, here they explain how, why and when the corridor was built as well as the history of the Cathedral, however we could not go up because the tour had begun and we had to wait for the next one.
However, we were able to tour the church and photograph it.

From inside you can see that it is very high, it has different sculptures, murals, glass reliefs and other things, although it is not very big, it is super high, but small compared to others that I have entered. The Polish corridor can be seen at the top, where there is a glass where you can see the steps and people.

And finally we finished walking the downtown streets, the square in front of the Cathedral and other places and then we went to eat something and return home.

The trip to the Volcano is something that I will tell you soon with more details, as it was the longest and the route with more stops, it was really great and amazing to visit this place.

See you next time.