Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

From Cartagena we headed to Medellin.  I was sort of looking forward to Medellin because we planned to stay at a hostal called "The Black Sheep", owned and operated by a kiwi.

So, taking an overnight "Buscama" (bus with a bed) from Cartagena we left for Medellin.

When we arrived we took a taxi straight to the hostal, that is to say once we found our way out of the bus station, a 4 level giant of a place.  The taxis left from the 3rd floor, go figure.

We were in for a bit of a surprise, the area where the black sheep was situated was so developed it could have been a suburb of Auckland.  The hostal itself was an un-assuming place with only a small black sheep painted on the fence, and no sign announcing its presence.  At first we thought we were in the wrong place.

The hostal was perfect.  It had a kitchen with actual hot water coming from a tap in the sink.  It had good showers and a decent sized bed.  Kelvin (the owner) was full of useful information and probably the best part of all was the comfy sofas to lounge around on.

Medellin has a metro system (something Auckland seriously needs to consider, actually I have another idea for Auckland but more on that later).  The metro is great, you pay 1 price and you can travel as far as you like, there is one main line and 3 to 4 smaller ones crossing it.

The next morning we took the metro into town to look for the sculptures by Botero (you may remember him from Cartagena).  There is a plaza here containing maybe 30 huge sculptures and a museum with some of his paintings. Here are a few of our favourite sculptures:

The next day we again took the metro (I loved that thing) to the bus station and hopped on a bus to a big rock called "El Peňol".  There is a staircase built into the side and great views from the top of the surrounding area, filled with lakes themselves filled with trout.  Unfortunately we picked the same day to visit as a million other people (almost all Colombians) and it took forever to climb up, due in part to the narrow places where the people going up had to wait for those coming down. 

From the rock we walked 30-40 mins to the nearby town of "Guatapé" (oddly there is a town not so nearby called "El Peňol", go figure) where we had lunch, Erin had the trout and I tried a local dish called "Mondongo".. bad move, it was essentially a soup with bits of unidentifiable meat throughout.

The town was nice, we quite like this shot of the church.

It was nearing dusk and the weather was cloudy and not at all warm, plus our transport home was to be this "chiva", an open sided bus.

So, we decided to purchase a blanket to keep us warm (I had also forgotten my jacket!).  We ended up with a "Spiderman" blanket which Erin keeps confusing with Superman (what is it with women and superheroes?). 

I think a blanket has to be on the top 10 things to have travelling in South America.  We have used it a couple of times in hostals and on overnight buses in Colombia where they crank up the air conditioning to full for the whole trip, because, get this "we´ve paid for it").  You don´t however need to bring one with you because you can just buy one once you get here.

We didn´t do much else in Medellin, from here we shot back to Bogota.