Colombia Part I: Medellin

Medellin -

Day 1:

La Margarita restaurant to eat Bandeja Paisa - try it! You will love it. It is the national dish of Colombia. Its a huge plate of rice, beans, salad, ground beef, avocado, salsas and chicharrones (crispy fried pork).

Plaza Pablado - graffiti surrounding the square

Pueblito Paisa - the view. They also have a tiny old town Colombian square and traditional house to check out.

Carrera 70 in Laureles - where we stayed. Was a cool place to walk around day or night and we were told was a very safe area.

Day 2:

Too much Pablo Escobar...

Cemetario Jardins Montesacro

La Catedral in Sabaneta

The view from this place was amazing. You could see nearly the whole city and the countryside. And it's a steep winding forest path all the way up the mountain to this spot.

The city just went on an on as far as you could see. Even nestled in the mountains Medellin is such a huge city. Even with the fog covering the city in the distance it was a beautiful landscape.

Hydrangeas in bloom

Edificio Monaco - ehh...disappointment

El Rancherito Restaurant - another plate of Bandeja Paisa to share

Parque Lleras - was my favorite park we went to in the city. Loved it even though it was raining. It rained pretty much every day there. I was so glad I brought my rain coat.

There were restaurants and bars all around the park so it was a fun little place to hang out in at night. There were street musicians who came out to perform in the park after dark.

Plaza Botero - This was one of the sketchier things we did at night, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It seemed like this was one of the real Columbian places to go at night, not for tourists, but a little down and dirty. Meanwhile this area is right next to/surrounding the art museum and the plaza of Botero statues.

Botero was not an artist that I was familiar with, but he is the pride and joy of Medellin when it comes to art. He loves to paint and sculpt big fat naked people. And fat animals. And everything fat and round.

Eslabón Prendido - Finally the last thing we did on this first full day in Colombia is try to find a salsa dancing place called Eslabon Prendido. We had read online that they had live music and was normally packed full of salsa dancers. While we did not find the salsa dancers or live music we happened upon another sketchy square just kitty corner to the salsa place that was full of Colombian hipster kids. Like legit hipster kids. I'm pretty sure there was a university campus around that area.

Day 3:

Cable Cars from Acevedo Station

In Medellin the metro system is integrated with a cable car system that takes people up the mountains, into the favelas perched all around the city. Because the city is somewhat like a huge bowl surrounded by mountains, the buildings continues to go up on almost every side as people need more space. Medellin had an very well developed public transport system I gotta say though, better than any I've seen in the states. You pay one price to get into the metro system and you can take any train or cable car from there, with the only exception I saw being the cable car to enter Parque Arvi. But totally worth it if you ask me.

A view of how steep the streets were in the favelas on the mountainside

And we continued to go up.

As a reference point of how high/far the cable cars go: the time from getting on the cable car at the bottom of the mountain to the end of the line at Parque Arvi took us 40 minutes one way in the cable car.

The view from the top

When we got to the top of the mountain, we were surprised to find out that the cable cars keep going on to the other side of the mountains, out of the city and into the dense jungle. We had no idea where we were going, but we were along for the ride.

Parque Arvi - and finally we arrived.

With only about 20 minutes before we had to head back down to meet our tour guide, we went on a quick little nature trail in the park.

Guatape - about a 45 min drive out of the city, there is a little folk town called Guatape. This town is known for having all of its buildings' sides plastered with artwork.

An extremely colorful little town.

And the moto chivas. A tiny 3 wheeled version of the giant colorful chivas buses which took people into the countryside. Why they needed buses so colorful and decorative to go into the farmlands? We don't know, but they are very festive.

El Penon de Guatape - The Rock

I should have taken a better picture of the staircase, because it was a lot more daunting than it looks here. It was more than 650 steps to the top.

So the story is, there used to be a small river that ran through this area of Penol. The people there built a dam which flooded the area turning the former mountain town into a lake town with many islands and peninsulas. The dam they built produced a large amount of energy which they sell to other places and neighboring countries. Thanks to this income they have been able to build New Penol a little downtown area with sky rises and all the modern amenities. But there still exists Old Penol with the farms and lakes and all the beautiful vacation type homes. The view from the top of this rock is absolutely amazing, words can't even describe how vast and beautiful the landscape is.

Eslabon Prendido - we decided to go back and try the salsa place one more time. We went for a short amount of time but were actually able to watch some pretty talented salsa dancers there.

Parque Lleras - and back to my favorite park for some night life!

Day 4:

Cable cars from San Javier - We had such an amazing experience on the cable cars from Acevedo station, we decided to take another cable car route, this time leaving from our side of town. This is the last thing we were able to do in Medellin before catching our flight to Cartagena.

The mosaic art in the station at the end

And just like that, we went on to Cartagena!