Manizales

Manizales is the capital of the coffee region in Colombia, build over typical green hills of the region, it was cloudy most of the time I was there, with light rain showers now and then, the city has a nice center, with an old cathedral and some monuments, but generally the city is quite modern, and most of the people are white, it reminded me a lot of Argentina. I stayed at the mountain house a new hostel, run by two very friendly and dedicated young Colombian women (Cristina and Angelica), the place very nice and luxurious, the most luxurious hostel I been to in Colombia, and close to many pubs at the avenida Santander.

The first day I went to visit the center, which was nice, even walked up to the top of the Chipre neighborhood to see an artistic monument, took a taxi to go back, but the hostel address on the information paper of the hostel was incorrect, so when we got there of c ourse there was no hostel, and when I asked the driver to just drive me to the avenida Santander, he reset the counter, and demanded I pay two separate fares, son off a B%$#%, anyway I paid but only after a very unfriendly exchange of words. The next day I wanted to visit a coffee finca (farm), I did not have a good sleep at night, and ended up waking up quite late, anyway I took a bus to Chinchani, a near by village, then took a taxi, which even though I gave him the right address, drove me to the wrong place, some shop which was closed, so I went to have some launch, and went back to the shop, this time the shop was open, it was the wrong place of course, but the man was kind enough to point me to the right house down the street, there I met Carlos, the owner of the finca, only to be told that he was too busy today to take me on a tour to the farm, bummer, so I just headed back to Medellin, without seeing a coffee farm, I was just going through one of those periods where everything I do goes wrong, for some reason that is not my fault, I decided not to try again the next morning, and just went on with my original plan to go to Medellin, I hope my experience there will be better.