Colombia Part III

Medellin
Luckily Yon has an apartment in Medellin as well so he invited us to the city for the weekend. It was about time to get moving, but yet another hard place to leave. El Penol will always be a special place for us! The morning we decided to leave we had a big breakfast, swam and did some minor repairs on the old girl before setting off. Then after a few fruit stops we arrived in the sprawling city of Medellin. One of the cleanest and most modern cities we’ve visited thus far. It’s in a deep valley so they’ve solved the transportation problem by building an above ground metro that leads to a metrocable which is essentially a Gondola that they use as public transportation. Great idea!! When we got to the apartment we had some take out Chinese food and then went to meet a friend that Pete had met in Colombia 13 years ago. Her family welcomed us in and fed us a wonderful traditional Colombian meal finished off with some Mazamorra, a milk drink filled with corn and served with a panela square for dessert. After dinner we bid our adieus and went to meet Yon downtown for some salsa dancing. He took us to this amazing little underground club where they were pumping great salsa tunes and there were some amazing dancers. The ceiling wasn’t built for tall people, but it was a great night out!! The next day Yon took us on the tour of the city. We started off with a hike up behind his apartment building for a great view of the city and then we jumped on the Metro. For $0.75 you can ride the rails all day so we took advantage of this for a skyline tour of the city. The metrocable that we rode went up to the athlete’s village, but went over top of the poorest sections of town. It was odd having a bird’s eye view of places you wouldn’t necessarily want to walk through. Then we returned to town to see the statues outside of the Botero museum, a police procession to signify the end of needless deaths in Colombia and have a quick bite before heading to our first giant supermarket in a long time. We were awed by the selection of foods and even managed to find some couscous. Luckily we were picked up by a friend of Yon’s and went back to his apartment for a big fish fry up. Yon’s mom taught us how to eat every part of the fish including the eyeball! We ended up spending over a week with Yon and his mom and by the end we felt more like family then travellers. Thank you so much for taking us in!!!

Salento

After Medellin we made our way down to Salento, in the Zona Cafetera. On our way we got lost in Pereira and couldn’t find our way out of the city. We finally found our way out on a back road and were now racing the sun as it was setting quickly. We agreed to take the first accommodation that we would find to avoid driving around in the dark. We pulled up to the first campground and were surprised by how nice it was. It was next to a river and had many private sites, hot water and outdoor kitchens. After Jorge, the eccentric owner and his co worker properly welcomed us they gave us the full tour of the campground. We were blown away by all of the theme tents and cabanas, the museum, spa and snake pit. The next morning we were invited by a Colombian family to join them for a hike up to a secret waterfall. After 45 minutes of beautiful hiking through farm fields and old rail tunnels we arrived at the falls. The water was Canada cold, a nice way to recharge from the heat and humidity. One night at Monteroca (the campground) turned into four. One day we made a day trip into Salento to check out the artisan shops and go for dinner but for the rest of the time we relaxed at Monteroca all by ourselves.

Popoyan, Impiales

In the heaviest downpour that we’ve experienced so far we headed to Popoyan, a colonial city on the way to the Ecuadorian border. When we got there we found a parkade close to downtown that would let us sleep there for the night, it was perfect only $3.25 and it had a toilet. That evening we got caught in another rainstorm but luckily we had just purchased umbrellas only minutes before. They kept our hair dry but our feet were soaked from the roads that now resembled rivers. The next morning we got up early and took off for Pasto. When we got there neither of us had any desire to stay so we kept driving and chanced upon an old timers restaurant where he told us we should park in his alleyway for the night. Lucky!

We had high expectations for Colombia and it managed to exceed every single one. We’ll be back!!

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