Colombia

March 24 - April 2

Medellin

We arrived in Medellin after a 12 hour excursion from San Diego, with a four hour layover in Miami. The best parts included a guy sitting practically on my head talking on his phone while i was trying to sleep in the airport, a lady yelling at me for sort of almost running into her daughter, and three wack guys behind me on the flight. We got there, tired but ready to see Colombia!

The drive to Sonia's apartment was beautiful! I was amazed at the scenery to be quite honest. From first glance Colombia was nothing like I pictured.

First we went to Sonia's apartment, which is apparently located in one of the upper strata neighborhoods. She explained that each neighborhood has a strata rating, from 1-6, and the one she lives in is a 5-6. Such a nice place, with mini-golf, a trampoline, a pool, workout room, basketball courts and a playground.

We then took our first ever pole-dancing class, something I definitely never imagined myself doing. It was fun and obviously hilarious. It was at "Pin-Up Girl Acadamy"...of course.

We then had dinner and drinks in Parque Llera, at a place called Mendell. It was a really nice night and we stayed out talking with Sonia and her friend Lynn before finally getting some sleep for the first time in forever!


We woke up super early (after finally having slept, thank GOD), and then went to the SOUTH AMERICAN OLYMPICS! Sonia's entire school went to the games and she invited us along with them. We watched the swimming time trials. It was so much fun. The best part was when Manda and I were in the bathroom, and these little girls realized we were from Estados Unidos, and then proceeded to make us take a million pictures with them. Afterwards, they were trying to ask us questions and we didn't really understand, and then one asked "tourista?" and we saiid Si!!! Then all of their faces fell and we realized they had thought we were Olympic athletes. hahahah. Pretty nice thing to be mistaken for though I suppose...



SALENTO
The journey from medellin to Salento was basically a bus ride from hell. We were on the most windy roads for 2 hours, the entire time I was thinking, someone is going to puke...and then it didn't seem like anyone did and it finally calmed down. But when I went to the bathroom about ready to pee my pants, I realized someone had made it to the bathroom sink. But it was either brave the dirty bathroom or seriously urinate in my bus seat, so I spent the worst 1.5 minutes of my life trying to pee for what seemed like an eternity, without puke sloshing out of the sink onto me. What made it even better was the window OPEN in the bathroom so when I stood up trying to pull my pants up, I barely cared that everyone outside could see me, I was much more concerned about avoiding the disgusting bodily fluids that were trying to attack me!

Other than that, the ride was beautiful. We got to see a lot of the Colombian countryside, which consisted of rolling green tropical hills, absolutely gorgeous.



Salento was a much more traditional and small town compared to the big city of Medellin. It is centered around their town square, that becomes alive during the day and night with food and product vendors, in addition the many surrounding restaraunts. We stayed at The Plantation House, my first ever hostel experience. It was THE cutest little place, nestled in the trees, but with amazing accomodations. The owner, Tim, owned the Plantation House, as well as the coffee finca down the street.


The first night we were there we made a little group of friends at the hostel, and then went to a local bar where a game called Tejo was played. This was a modified version of horseshoes, in which there was 2 clay pits about 10 yards apart from each other. The goal was to throw the chunks of metal at the packet of gunpowder and get it as close as possible or hopefully hit it and make it explode. None of us were very good compared to the locals playing next to us, but it was fun anyway.



La Valle De Cocoras

The Valle de Cocoras is the valley of wax palms. We got horses at the bottom and then rode them about a third of the way up, before hiking another hour to the top. It was so pretty there!



Cafe Finca

The owner of the plantation house also owned the coffee finca down the road and gave us a tour. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip, because of my well known obsession with coffee in general. He gave us an overview of the growing, harvesting, drying and roasting techniques.



Manizales

Our stay in Manizales was brief, and was the only day it rained on our entire trip. It was not bad though, because we ended up going to a hotsprings where we soaked and drank wine for hours and hours with our new friends Anna and Howard. It was a very relaxing atmosphere and the hotel that the hot springs was at was so cute.



Guatupe
We spent a day climbing the big rock near Guatupe and then exploring the city itself. This was one of the most breathtaking views!





Typicos, the typical Colombian meal including beans, rice, avacado, arepes, and chorizo.

Cable Cars
Medellin has an amazing metro system, which includes cable cars that extend into the mountainous poor zones (slums), in order to create transportation for people living in the slums to be able to work jobs in the city. We took a ride in them just to take a look, and I was amazed at how devastating their slums really are :(




Chiva!

The last night in medellin Sonia arranged a chiva, aka Colombian party bus to drive us around to the different "parques", and party on. Unlike party buses in the states, it was more of an open trolley bus (making it incredibly easy to fall out of, not unlike the unsafe situations for all of the other modes of transportation). But it was so much fun!!