…..But of course I had to be told that many, many times before I got it right! We left Selento by bus headed toward Medellin on a very rainy morning and were just so grateful that the day before we had such great weather for the hike to Cocora. It rained all night which made for many puddles and Maria Elena found us a short cut to our bus via a town bus where she knew the driver and the route. The drive to Medellin was, once again, slow and arduous as we drove through construction sites and were frequently behind transport trucks and all varieties of traffic. ColOmbia is a country under construction and it will be amazing to come back in a decade or so and see the changes. But as for today we were headed to Medellin and were excited to see what ColOmbia’s second city had to offer.
Medellin, with a population of approximately 2.5 million, is known as the City of eternal spring because of its moderate temperature. Founded in 1616 by the Spanish its rapid growth began early in the 20th century with the arrival of the railroad and a profitable boom in coffee production. By the mid 1980’s however, Medellin became the capital of the world’s cocaine business under the leadership of Pablo Escobar, a name that will be familiar to many. At that time Medellin’s homocide rate was among the highest on the planet but this began to change when Escobar was killed in 1993. It’s reputation, and that of Colombia, has been slow to change but today Medellin is considered to be one of the safest cities in Latin America.
While in Medellin we stayed at the Urba Buddha hostel which was recommended by a previous hostel owner. It was a funky little place in a fairly residential area and we were the oldest people there……which was often the case wherever we stayed. The young folks took a bit of a shine to us and one night when we were going out to dinner one of them said “…and what time will you be in?” Needless to say we were in before they went out and a few hours later I, at least, was awoken by their partying and it seemed they forgot we were upstairs!
One of the highlights in Medellin is its very modern metro system which takes you from one end to the other and up the side of the hill. The city is situated in a narrow valley and then it’s built up the sides so when you’re in the downtown area you just look up the sides of the mountains and there’s housing everywhere, usually for the poor and one wonders how do they get down. We found out how by taking the gondola style transportation up the mountainside much like we did when we went skiing in Sunshine in Alberta. The trip up takes about twenty minutes and this is part of your metro system ticket. If you want you can pay to take another gondola for about ten minutes more and then get off at a village/tourist site/beautiful park area which is extremely amazing and was a shock to find. I’ve attached some pictures but you’ll have to use google again to get a sense of this amazing city.
The weather has been great for walking around and we’ve done a great deal of that which is good because eating out can shrink your pants! The temperature here in Medellin has averaged between 20-25 which is a good bit warmer than it was in Bogota but we’re headed to Cartagena where it’s supposed to be very hot…….and the sweat shall pour!
Note: This post was done on Sunday but the Internet cuts in and out a fair bit so we’re often a day or two behind….stay tuned and hope all is well.