Medellin & Guatapé

Just before leaving Cali, Troy and Shayne, a couple of friends I travelled with earlier joined up with me. They had been staying at a town at the pacific cost, el Valle, for 10 days. There they saw no other tourist during that time, and in order to come back they had to take a ride on a cargo boat loaded with timber, because there were no more speed boats ferrying people. The trip back to Buena Ventura on the boat took them more than a day. I guess I missed on that adventure.


We had only one night in Cali, before I went on to Medellin and they went back to Bogota, and we decided to go out in Cali. I have wanted to visit a cafe called Nargila for a while, and I convinced Troy and Shane to join me; they liked the idea of smoking shisha (Nargila). The cafe appears to be owned by a Jewish Israeli, who is try8ing to create an authentic Middle Eastern atmosphere in his cafe: Narigilas (Shishas), Arabic music, Belly dancing and Middle Eastern food. We smoked a couple of shisha, and enjoyed the dancing show. It was a fun experience all together.


My next stop was Medellin, on my way to the coast. I decided that I am going to buy a new camera to replace my old one, which no longer worked. I checked a few camera shops, and did some Internet research. In the end it came down to a choice between two cameras: the Sony Cyber Shot 6MPixel, and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3 5MPixel. In the end I chose the Lumix; it had a 6x zoom(7.5 at 3MPixel) compared with the Sony normal 3x zoom, and it was 140$ cheaper. 5.0 or 6.0MPixels doesn´t make a difference for me. This Camera has all the features that I always wanted in my old camera, mainly the higher zoom and high quality video (640x480 at 30fps). And few more other features I didn’t know I needed, and that I am trying to learn now by reading the manual. It is slightly bigger than my older camera, but it still fits in the same camera case, which is good enough for me. All the pictures published in this post were taken by my new camera.

Because of some bite or wound, I had developed an infection in my right thigh. After a few days of the infection getting worst, (it looked like a huge dimple on my right thigh). I decided to see a doctor. The doctor gave me a salt solution to apply to the infection, and some antibiotics. It is getting better, should be gone in a couple of days. But no alcohol for me for a while.


Medellin is indeed the city of eternal spring, great weather all around the year; generally dry, sunny and with temperate temperatures, no wonder all the rich people of Colombia come to live here. I went up a cable cart, which took me to a good view point over the city. The cable cart is part of the metro system. Before that ride, I could have been forgiven to think that only rich people live in Medellin; the area around the Black Sheep hostel is a rich neighborhood; upscale houses and apartment buildings, modern shopping centers and fancy café and restaurant parks. The cable cart on the other hand goes over what seems to be the poor neighborhoods of Cali, a large expanse of shoddy houses, all with tin or aspest roofs.


After the cable cart ride I headed to Guatapé, an amazing natural landscape, which looks like a combination of fiords and an archipeligio, set in a lake a couple of hours from Medellin. In the middle of the lake, there is a rock that rises up high, providing a view over the whole surroundings. The bus dropped me at the entrance to the rock, where I was offered to ride a mule up to the base of the rock, for 4000 pesos, which sounded pretty cheap, I agreed. Then I found out why it was so cheap, he only took me about a third of the way up, like three minutes on the mule; I had to go up the rest of the way walking, what a crook. Probably I was not the only one who fell for this. After reaching the base of the rock, and taking a few pictures, I climbed to the top of the rock, using a long stairway, where I had a magnificent view of the area.

My next stop is Barranquilla at the Caribbean coast, I made a short stop there, booked a hotel for the carnaval, this went on to Taganga, probably my favourite place in Colombia.