journeywithmadonna

We arrived in Cartagena on Sunday afternoon and once we stepped out of the airport the smoldering heat just hit us in the face…………..Dawn, Yves and Jim just smiled and I immediately started to sweat!   Thank God we decided to fly and not take the 16 hour bus ride from Medellin……this was decided about a week ago when we were advised that Easter was fast approaching and in ColOmbia people take holidays around this time so the buses, planes and accommodation fill up quickly.   This meant, of course, that we had to come up with a plan with regard to where we would be, when we would be there and how we would get there.     Took a little time but we booked our flights and accommodations and are hopeful that it will all work out.  ColOmbia has almost 45 million people and is very Catholic although like in many parts of the world few people regularly attend mass.    Holy week, the week before Easter, is a very special time here and many ColOmbians are on the move so it will be interesting to see how it is celebrated.    Cartagena was conquered by the Spanish in 1553 and is the second oldest surviving city with a population of approximately one million.   It gets extremely hot here, for me at least, and the siesta time is from noon to two pm  rather than from two to four as it is in some countries.   On a sad note it is said that the homeless often beg not for money but for limeade……………..and I am happy to report that it has not been a big problem for us.  Cartagena’s old town is a Unesco World heritage site and is stunning.   Our nephew, Ian, was here a few years ago and described it as a movie set and it is so true.  The outer town, however, is full of traffic and is extremely busy and no doubt we will be spending very little time there over the next few days.  Our hostel, Casa Mara, was recommended by a previous hostel owner and is in the outer walled town, Getsemani area, which tends to be a little less expensive than if you were staying in the inner walled town which is just a five minute walk.  Casa Mara is a neat little hostel(see pictures below) and has ten rooms and a small swimming pool which is excellent for cooling off.   Dawn and Yves were quite lucky and got the room on the 3rd floor which has a deck and a small outdoor hottub type pool………but it does not need to be hot, but cool!   Needless to say that is where we have happy hour and cocktails and just hang out when we do not need to be in our air-conditioned rooms.   Other than that luxury it is quite basic but is safe and secure and has wonderful staff.   It is also clean but standards in ColOmbia are not what we are used to in North America so it is good we left those standards behind and adjust accordingly.   Our first dinner in Cartagena was just a five minute walk from our hostel and was excellent.    While we were sitting there the little park in front of the Church, literally across the street, filled up with locals and tourists alike and a Zumba class broke out very much like the ones we go to back home.   On a full belly, however, I decided not to participate…………….the heat was also a deciding factor.   But we did enjoy the happenings in the park, the music  and the liveliness of the neighborhood.   Fortunately when we crashed it was extremely quiet,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but our air conditioner did not work……………..sweat all night and changed rooms in the morning…………no problem!  On our first full day we decided to walk over to the old walled city and the whole time were amazed by its beauty, the colors, the flowers hanging over the balconies and generally its charm.   It was easy to kill three or four hours just wandering around being a tourist and totally enjoying it.   Of course that meant it was time for a cerveza and a fish lunch now that we are on the coast!    The advice here is that you get up early and get out and do your touring before noon because it is so hot from 12 to 2……………so we took that advice and then headed home to relax in the pool and our rooms until we wandered off again later in the afternoon to see what else was going on and to find a place for dinner.   Surprisingly it was quite lively for a Monday night but we never really could find a restaurant that was appealing to us all and did not want to go to the same one as the night before.   Eventually an elderly little ColOmbian found Dawn and Yves wandering and suggested he could bring us to an excellent restaurant a three minute walk away.   But as you know by now ColOmbians have a difficult time guesstimating time and three minutes became about ten, which is nothing really, and we ended up in a very neat little restaurant that we would not have found on our own.   It was fairly expensive and of course he expected payment and we realized that is what he did………..pulled people off the streets into not only this restaurant but anything they were looking for, ie. hostel or hotel, corner store, cruise, etc.  He was quite the character, apparently used to be in the navy and had a good command of the English language………..quite the little entrepreneur really.  Dinner was delicious but we all agreed that we are not really crazy about ColOmbian food; haven’t had anything too terrible yet but nothing I’m really dying to try again.   Mind you that coconut ice cream was pretty special and I might need to try it again!

…..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.