Hi all. I´m back in Bogota to chill out for a few days before boarding my flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday (I am going to be back in the states for a week before flying out to Istanbul). I spent six days in Medellin, but I could have stayed for weeks more. Medellin is known for its perfect year-round spring climate, stunning setting in a valley surrounded by green mountains, excellent plastic surgeons and Pablo Escobar. During the heyday of the Medellin Cartel in the 80s and 90s, Medellin was infamous for rampant drug-related crime. With curfews and loads of motorcycle assassins, it didn´t attract too many visitors at the time. Medellin today, however, is an entirely different place with an extraordinarily vibrant nightlife and some of the friendliest people you will ever meet.
After arriving on Saturday morning, Chris and I ended up at the Palm Tree Hostal, a lovely hostel with the cleanest communal kitchen I have ever seen in Colombia. Generally speaking I don´t cook very much when I travel because kitchens are often dirty and it is usually cheaper to eat out. The Palm Tree, however, offered free coffee, unlimited oranges to make fresh juice and two eggs per day. We ended up making breakfast and dinner every single night, a really welcome change after eating so much tasty but not very healthy Colombian food for weeks. It´s amazing how delicious steamed broccoli tastes when you haven´t had it in awhile! Chris is a very good cook so we took turns with the meals. The other travelers were really into cooking as well, so the hostel had a great, homey feeling to it. It was also small enough that you knew everyone who was staying there, and the group was pretty diverse – in addition to the usual Aussies and Brits, I also met travelers from Switzerland, Italy, France, Argentina, Brazil and the US.
We were pretty tired from the bus journey, but since it was Saturday night we felt obligated to go out and experience the famous Medellin nightlife. It definitely did not disappoint! We started at an electronic club with some people from Palm Tree, where I had my first dose of serious Colombian plastic surgery. Holy crap! I don´t think I have ever seen so many fake tits in my life. The ass implants were pretty entertaining as well. Some women were really starting to look like trannies though, which I don´t think was the intended effect…
That club closed at 4am, which felt way too early. We wandered outside to ask where the next spot was. After a short chat we ended up in a car with some very drunk but friendly Colombian guys who plied us with whiskey and red bull as they drove us to the next club. I would never get into a drunk stranger´s car back home, but the rules when traveling are a little more…relaxed. I rode in vehicles and motorbikes with drunk drivers in Southeast Asia all the time, just because, well, everyone was drunk and there wasn´t much you could do about that.
Anyway… the second club reminded me a lot of the clubs in Vegas, except that it was full of Colombians, not Midwesterners. More electronic music, more expensive booze, etc. I ran into some travelers I had met earlier in my trip, which happens a lot more often than you would think. Right outside the club were street vendors selling cigarettes, lollipops, gum, and all sorts of random crap you might want for a late night at a club. At around 6am we finally got tired of dancing, caught a taxi home and flew through the city as the cabbie blasted the best hits of UB-40 while driving like a maniac. Nice.
Sunday was spent doing pretty much nothing as we nursed our hangovers – had some food, watched movies in the living room and chilled out with the other hungover travelers at the hostel. After that indulgent and extremely lazy day, we did go out and explore the city a bit during the rest of the week:
Monday – Indian vegetarian restaurant for lunch, and then the Botero museum and plaza. The overview of modern Colombian paintings was really interesting.
Tuesday – Took the cable car up to the top and explored a neighborhood that used to be a total slum. The cable car has transformed this neighborhood by connecting it to the rest of Medellin. Now people can go to school or work with much more ease. Also, a huge, modern library has just opened up in that neighborhood, and we saw several offices that looked like they were giving business training. And there were tons of adorable kids running around!
Wednesday – More paragliding for me, first time for Chris and Adam (Aussie from the hostel). This time was even better because of the fantastic views of the city. Also, I wasn´t scared at all this time, so I took a lot more photos. We landed in a big dirt patch in a poor neighborhood where the kids gawked at my camera and hopped around us. As we headed to the metro afterwards, we ended up stopping at an empanada stand and eating about 20 potato empanadas (they were small!) while chatting with some friendly locals.
Later that night we went out in Zona Rosa, party central in Medellin. Since it was Wednesday night it was pretty tame, so we had just one drink and headed back (I still felt like I was recovering a bit from Saturday anyway). There were TONS of bars and clubs in that area though, and it looked like it would be really fun during the weekend.
Thursday afternoon we caught a bus to Manizales, a city in the heart of Zona Cafetera, the coffee-growing region of the country. I really didn´t want to leave Medellin, but forced myself to do so because of time constraints. I will be back though! Who knows when…
