Apologies for the lack of updates, but it has been an eventful past few days in Medillin, Colombia. Medillin is a massive city of 3 plus million people, stretched across a valley between the Andes mountains, with a long and storied history of violence. 20 years ago it was considered the most dangerous city in the entire world, today it is a model for the developing world.
Our flight arrived Thursday in Medillin at around 11 am. We shared a cab to the city center with some fellow American travelers whom we were friendly with at our hostel in Cartegena, Chrissy and Earl. Coincidentally, they booked the same flight as us. After separating upon arrival in Medillin, Gavin and I arranged to meet them for a what would be a Colombian Thanksgiving dinner, our first away from home. We quickly had to settle our things in our guest house as we had planned the previous day to meet Stephen (friend from Cartegena) to explore the city's cable car system. Stephen brought along a Colombian friend of his, Sebastien. Sebastien was quite familiar with Medillin, having lived there his whole life, so it was nice to have someone friendly and relaxed help us get to where we wanted to go.
On our walk to the elevated metro with Stephen and Sebastien, I noticed a street vendor selling a Salpicon variety. I say variety, because I noticed various different kinds of the fruity drink around the city. Some are sweetened, some are red, some were yellow...but all cold and delicious! I could now check it off my list of street foods & juices to try during our time in Colombia.
We took the elevated metro line to the station where you connect to ride the metro cable. The metro cable was inaugurated in 2004 and completed in 2009, with 3 cable lines taking you uphill to the north to northeast, west to northwest, and northeast to far northeast parts of the city. It allows for easier commutes for those whom live up the mountain slopes, but also promotes tourism. We took the cable high up over the barrios and over the peak of the mountain. The views were absolutely incredible and you could really see just how vast the city is. As for me, the motion and elevation at times was a bit nauseating. After passing over some farms, alpine trees and giant ferns of the highland tropical forest, we reached Parque Arvi Nature Reserve. It is a new project to promote tourism for Medillin (which may very well be a tourist meca in the future), but also a biological nature reserve. We had no time to explore, but arranged to come again the next day.
On our way down the metro cable, a storm passed over. We saw severe lightening flash all around us, but we felt safe. Once we reached the transfer station to finish the ride down, they discontinued service while the storm passed. Not wanting to wait considering we had dinner plans, we opted to take a local bus from where we were in the barrio to the city center. The only slightest sense of anxiety I felt was going down the slick, heavily populated, narrow mountain roads. It was an entertaining ride though, as we had a man with a wonderful voice singing on the bus, who serenaded us before hoping to collect our change at the end of the ride. Luckily, cabs in Colombia are abundant and quite cheap. We continued by cab to meet our friends at a restaurant called Mondongos.
Mondongo is a soup made from beef tripe (the cleaned stomach of a cow); a popular dish yet prepared differently in many Latin cultures. In Colombia, it is often eaten as the soup course of a traditional almuerzo (lunch), and made in a stock with many vegetables and cilantro. It was quite tasty when we had it with lunch in Cartegena, but the restaurant Mondongos served much more than just that. We were glad to feast on grilled steak, fried plaintain, potatoes, avocado, arepa patties, bananas, wine and Club Colombia beers with our 4 friends to celebrate and give thanks. The carne (meats) in Colombia are the best I've ever had, and we haven't even reached Argentina yet! From the steaks to chicken to chorizo, it was all very tender and savory.
We so thoroughly enjoyed our day in this great city, that we had decided to spend an additional day. Since this post is so long, I will post tomorrow evening about our adventures in Medellin yesterday, my thoughts and feelings on Colombia and it's people thus far, and our arrival into the smaller city of Pereira, where we will spend the next few days before heading to Bogota.
June
P.S: Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone back home!
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“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell
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