Medellin, Colombia

25th July – 28th July 2017

Although the flight from London to Bogotá was shorter than expected, it wasn’t the comfiest of planes I have ever been on. The leg room was limited (especially when the person in front reclined the whole way) and the seats were quite small. I found it really difficult to fall asleep and could not get comfy at all. Anyway, we (I probably should mention that I’m travelling with Ruth for the first few weeks) made it to Bogotá after a very bumpy landing at 2.45am. I wouldn’t recommend flying with ‘Avianca’, to anyone though. We didn’t have much to do then once we collected our bags as our flight up to Medellin wasn’t until 11.40, so we sat in the airport and tried to entertain ourselves.

The language barrier started to become more of a panic when we were sat on the plane and were given a landing card written completely in Spanish! As much as I tired to learn some before I came away, it wasn’t enough to read the full card and understand it. The passport control man was friendly enough though and through pointing and saying the odd word, we got ourselves through security.

Sitting in the airport didn’t pass much time but we had a wander and got some food. It’s a little hard to get your head around the exchange rates here because it is all priced up in the thousands but converts to such a small amount in English money. The time difference and length of journey also messed with our heads and bodies because we found ourselves eating chicken and chips for breakfast, at 9.30am – it cost 10,200 pesos, which converted to just £2.81. It was a lot for us to get our heads round after being awake for well over 24 hours at that point!

The time eventually passed and it was time for the next flight, which ended up being delayed (but I wouldn’t expect anything less with my travel history). After a 30 minute flight and we landed in Medellin.

Finding our way into the city was easy – there were buses labelled telling us where they were heading and I had done some research last week, so I had an idea what I was looking for. We got off the bus and following my research knew that the Hostel was only a 25-30 minute walk, which we thought would be no problem as it wasn’t too hot and we are relatively fit (especially after all my gym prep!). We weren’t completely wrong but it was a tough walk, through some deprived looking areas; we walked up some steep inclines with more than 20kg each around our bodies and it took some strength, but we did it!

Once we found our Hostel, we had a friendly welcome from the woman behind the desk but between her lack of English and our lack of Spanish, it was difficult to communicate. Another guest was passing who was able to speak a little of both Spanish and English, even though he was Italian and as he was translating, I quickly picked up on the Spanish I had learnt and could understand a lot of what the woman was saying. She gave us a tour of the Hostel and very kindly told us the good places to see and the not so good places to see around Medellin centre.

We left the Hostel after this and went for a wander; we felt we didn’t want to waste a day sat in the airport and thought it would be a good chance to get our bearings of the place. We wandered down some streets and although I didn’t really have any expectations, it wasn’t what I thought it would be! The volume of traffic is more than I imagined which is creating a lot of pollution for the city – it makes the city have a dirty look and you can taste the fumes in your mouth. Although I didn’t feel in danger, I didn’t feel overly welcomed by the locals. Anyway, we wandered into the centre and back before cooking tea, planning tomorrow’s antics and relaxing for the evening.

To say I was awake for about 43 hours and spent most of the day sat in the airport, 12391 steps wasn’t a bad effort for day one and I certainly didn’t struggle to fall asleep that night, despite the other guests chatting and playing music (understandably as it wasn’t even 9 o’clock).

Day two began quite early after waking up almost every hour throughout the night – hopefully my body clock won’t take too long to adjust! I had the coldest shower of my life (the language barrier didn’t help because I couldn’t ask if hot water existed, but I later over heard a conversation that the water is out at the moment – just my luck!) but I felt very refreshed afterwards. We ate breakfast and headed out for the day after covering ourselves with sun cream and insect repellent.

We walked back through the city centre and the more we saw, the more I realised how poor the city is. We stopped along the way and looked at the Plazo Botero which looked pretty but we didn’t stop there long as we couldn’t read the signs so kept on walking. The further out of the centre we got, the closer to the mountains we came and the beauty of the city started to come through!

We arrived at the Botanical Gardens and it was like stepping into a different world from the one we were just in – all the noise disappeared, all the smells disappeared; it was calm and tranquil and beautiful all around. We wandered through the gardens and around the lagoon, seeing iguanas, turtles and ducks (luckily no frogs have been spotted yet). I almost didn’t want to leave the gardens as it was such a pretty place.

Next we got a train (again the language barrier became difficult when trying to buy tickets) and headed towards the cable car line. As we got off the train, it was obvious we were now in a completely different part of the city: the hills were covered in favelas and lots of little shanty towns. It was eye opening to see how people are living like this and how different it is to my life back in England.

 

We got the cable car up to Santa Domingo, through the hills and over hundreds of favelas all built on top of one another, made from bits of brick and wood and corrugated metal. On our way up, we met some people from Peru (one of whom spoke English) and had some disjointed conversations with them. They told us that if we got a further cable car from Santa Domingo we could go over the tops of the hills into a forest, getting a whole view of the city from above, to Arvi. The views were unbelievable and no photo could do it any justice. We decided not to get off the car at Arvi, so said bye to our new friends and headed back down the hill with the cable car to ourselves (Ruth was thrilled at the photo opportunity we now had). The whole trip to the top and back was unbelievably cheap and cost us no more than £4 (including the return train rides and return cable car rides)!

Back down in the city, we decided to stay on the train a little longer and try and find the ‘tourist area’ that the woman in the Hostel told us about – we thought we might fit in a bit better there and not turn as many heads – but we didn’t have much luck. We ended up back in the centre though where it was very busy and wandered around a few market stalls.

By mid afternoon we thought the best option for us at the point was to go back to the Hostel – it was very hot, we hadn’t eaten or drunk much (because we don’t know what was safe) and we were getting tired.

Although the Hostel was constantly being cleaned and I noticed that some locals were trying the keep the city clean, the pollution from the cars was too much in Medellin and I felt like I was constantly eating petrol fumes. It was interesting to see the favelas and heading out of the city was much more beautiful than the inner city but two days was more than enough for me in the city. The first city has been ticked off and I’m ready to see what else lies ahead of me.

To travel is to live, Katie x