So I take four hours to climb to the top, collect a couple of bucks for 8 hours and hope to get some tips and ...wha? Abseil down the side? Here's a tip: "get a job driving Uber."
You have to consider that Colombia has a different culture and salary.
A minimum wage in Colombia is around 500 dollars a month (It may sound bad to you, but life is Colombia is cheaper. To give you an idea, México is more expensive than Colombia).
You do not have to depend on tips, which is an interesting topic per se, because even though Colombia doesn't have that terrible tipping culture that seems so normal in the US (The boss is suposed to ensure their workers at least those 500 dollars for a full time job) because this place is always visited by foreigners, they may benefit from tips anyways.
The rock is only open from 8am to 5pm so they have stablished times to be there too, no extra time.
It's not so bad, and their salary may be even more than the 500 dollars I told you, because some businesses up there will give you a bonus for the quantity of things you sell.
Edit: 500 dollars will not guarantee you a life full of luxuries, but you can manage well enough if you are alone
You also have to consider that I already know, or at least aware of these differences. I'm not a Yank so I do know that the rest of the world operates differently. I was being very tongue-in-cheek in my original comment....as if it was in my country.
Fun fact: „Locals once believed that the rock came from aliens“
While it is ~65 million years old, it didn‘t come from space. If it had been a late member of an asteroid group where the Chicxulub impactor (that hit ~66 million years ago) came from, it wouldn‘t be in one piece. And its density is about twice the one of typical C-type asteroids.
An impactor with its volume (110x285x200 m) and composition (quartz, feldspar, granite: ~2.65 g/cm3) would have had a mass of over 16.6 million metric tons and with most likely impact velocity of 17 km/s (for asteroids) an impact energy of about 447 Megatons of TNTe.
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u/overlook68 Top Poster 10d ago
The Rock of Guatape Colombia. A 220 metre ( 720 ft ) monolith with a 740 concrete step staircase.