Activity Summary
Tuesday 8th August - Day 308 (continued)
Flight to Medellin
Wednesday 9th August - Day 309
Centro walking tour - Real City Tours
Federal building with green wall
Monumento a la Raza
Plaza Cisneros
Flower show
Some big knock off shopping area
Parque Berrio / Basilica of Our Lady of Candelaria
Palace of Culture (Rafael Uribe)
Plaza Botero
El Pájaro
Lunch at Hacienda - Bandeja Paisa
Shopping mall trip
Thursday 10th August - Day 310
Comuna 13 tour - Zippy Tour Comuna 13
Lower parts of Comuna 13
Graffiti
Local school troops dance show
Comuna 13 hillsides
Lunch at Las Delicias De Martha
Short walk around the top of Comuna 13
Friday 11th August - Day 311
Guatape day tour
Breakfast on a hill
El Peñol
El Peñon de Guatapé
Guatapé town
Lunch at Don Oscar Parrilla
Party boat?
Saturday 12th August - Day 312
Cab to Terminal del Sur
Bus to Jardin
Summary
Medellin
The walking tours of centro and Comuna 13 were really good, interesting and mainly meant we could traverse the city in relative safety and peace of mind.
Is it a nice city? Not really. The El Poblado area where all the bars, restaurants and gringos are is more what we are used to but to quote one of the guides, this isn’t the real Medellin. The city feels pretty rough and while maybe not as bad as Santa Marta or Bogotá, definitely isn’t a relaxing place.
The history of the place was fascinating however and for that reason, along with the tours, made this the best city in Colombia so far. Although from what we’ve heard, Cali sucks so don’t think this will change.
Guatape
Nice area and made for a fun day trip. Wouldn’t want to do it of our own accord having done it as it was much more relaxing being ferried around.
Transport
Medellin
Hotel called taxi from hotel to airport
Flight to Medellin
Hotel organised transport to accommodation
Guatape
Private tour sorted all.
Accommodation
Medellin - Poblado Guest House
Number of nights - 4
Price per night per person - £16
Positives:
Decent enough kitchen
Enjoyed the indoor hammock
Breakfast provided
Filtered water given
It was cheap for the area
Poblado area definitely the best area to stay
Negatives:
Super hard & small double bed
Fan / window combination for cooling the room not great & also the mozzies (not many but vicious)
Shared bathroom between 6
Breakfast was all done in our apartment… and right next to the bog. Made for some less than private nervy poos
Recommend?
Na
Diary
[Continued]
The flight was quick and it was easy through bag collection. Outside the airport we managed to liaise with our taxi pick up a hell of a lot easier than Bogotá, arranged with our accommodation simply for the ease given it was dark and a good 30 minute journey to Poblado. It cost P100k so it was a little more expensive than hailing a cab outside the airport but we much prefer the ease and feel of improved safety this provided.
We checked into our shared apartment, cooked a basic ramen dinner and crashed out.
Neither of us managed to sleep well, and in fact didn’t the entire time we were here. The beds were hard which played havoc with Luke’s shoulder pain that had recently started flaring up and in requiring to have the window open for some air, Luke once again was the subject to relentless mozzie attacks. His shoulders were the only part outside the sheet and he ended up with a lovely line of swollen golf balls to add insult to injury. They also managed to get various other parts that happened to fall out in the night such as his ankle. Turns out when you have the fear of being eaten, you don’t sleep all that well.
Nicola conversely just couldn’t switch off. The self foot run she gave herself at 2am wasn’t greatly appreciated by Luke. Single beds for the win.
What we didn’t expect was the accommodation block breakfast to be made and provided in our apartment. So continuous loud banging and chatting commenced from about 7am and meant there was no chance of a lie in. We did get chatting to a very nice Dutch couple who were staying next door but would only cross paths with them in the mornings sadly. It was a pretty decent egg, fruit and coffee breakfast.
In our typical desired city exploring technique we booked on to a walking tour of central Medellin with a very very well recommended company called Real City Tours. Having walked through the centro, this is absolutely the only way we would have wanted to see this part of the city. It felt fairly rough, Nicola absolutely hated the place but our guide, Julio, was absolutely sensational.
This was by far the best walking tour we have ever done. Julio was a guide cut above the rest, an ex-teacher who understood how to deliver the history and facts in a way that was engaging, entertaining and interesting. Despite the 20ish sized group, he ended up trying to learn everyone’s names and was just an all round solid guy. He understood the history, had lived it and told it in a way that was real and interesting deliberately not just focussing on Escobar.
Luke also thoroughly enjoyed the sliding ‘papaya’ scale (for pickpocket risk) as we went through the tour. The 4.7 / 5 ended up being the highest level.
Could not recommend these guys enough.
We met at Alpujarra metro station, were split into groups and went on our way.
Federal building with green wall
Monumento a la Raza - a statue showcasing the history of the Paisa district / people, hilariously starting with Adam but taking on the likeness of the artist
Plaza Cisneros - square of 300 lights, once the crime hub of the cartels. The main two buildings are now the cultural and education centres for the city. The lights are currently bulbless however and have been that way for a while… but it did showcase the incredible transformation from crime ridden area that no one would go to to a safe area with opportunity.
Flower show - a bit of a random segment but there were leftover wreaths from the main show a few days prior
Some big knock off shopping area with art - we didn’t do much here but use the facilities and sit down for a bit
Parque Berrio / Basilica of Our Lady of Candelaria - an area that has been fenced off from the ‘riff raff’ of society and the tourist hot spot to little effect. Of more note here were the evident hookers behind us (not illegal but pimping is) where customers would then apparently run straight to the church to pray for forgiveness. Quite a hilarious synergy.
Palace of Culture (Rafael Uribe) - The commissioner Belgian artist had a falling out with lippy Colombians and only finished half of the building so half looks like a sort of neo-gothic church and the other a boring government building. Apparently the designs were too complicated.
Plaza Botero - Botero is a famous Medellin born and raised artist that is known for his exaggeration of form, the square littered with numerous of his sculptures worth a fortune that were donated to the city.
El Pájaro - Fernando Botero - site of a bomb, placed in a Botero that killed a number of people. It was kept on request of Botero & a replacement erected next to it
The tour ended at this point but the main takeaway was the history and how once the most violent city on earth had been transformed over time. The displacement of local cartels and replacing once horrifically violent areas with art, monuments and spaces while the metro was fundamental in providing opportunity, connection and help to the people all playing a massive part in turning things around.
Despite the tour being amazing, now on our own the unsavoury nature of the centro area was left to us to navigate on our own and Nicola, who had felt unsafe the whole tour, wanted to get out of there as fast as possible back to El Poblado and the bougie suburb we were staying in.
Luke was very keen to try a famous local dish called Bandeja Paisa, an oversimplification being a Colombians take on a full English breakfast consisting of egg, avo, arepa, plantain, rice, dried shredded beef, beans, chorizo, blood sausage and chicharron (fried pork belly). Not a healthy food choice but Hacienda was supposed to do some of the best Bandeja Paisa so we shared one of these extremely large dishes between us. It was alright but we concluded the full English was better.
We had booked an Amazon tour in Peru and both of us were short on jungle hiking supplies so we got a cab to the El Tesoro mall. It was frikin massive and apparently the largest in South America? It took us over 20 minutes to find the decathlon. It did however have cracking views over some of the city and the mountains.
With hiking trousers and long sleeve shirts purchased we Uber'd back to Poblado, via the Exito supermarket which looked more like a Waitrose than Tesco, before walking back home.
Dinner was an incredibly weak pasta dinner and decided against going to the local football game. It would have been a tall order trying to convince Nicola and Luke wasn’t desperate to go - but apparently it was really good fun with a great atmosphere and not too bad getting back according to the Dutch couple.
We once again had a nice morning breakfast and chat with the Dutch guys but sadly had to cut this short in order to get to our Comuna 13 tour starting from the San Javier metro stop.
The Comuna 13 tour we went with was Zippy Tour Comuna 13, run by guys who live in the Comuna. Our tour guide Estoban, a guy who knew his stuff but came across as quite aggressive in his style. Luke quite liked him and thought he was entertaining whereas Nicola really didn’t like him, especially when she felt he could have cut the tour in half from perceived waffling. She really didn’t like the spit about tinder - in summary don’t use it, only weird and dodgy Colombians use it. Apparently.
The places we went through of note were:
Lower parts of Comuna 13 - considered a 3 or 4 (1-6) on the social scale and middle class. Felt a lot safer than centro
A lot of graffiti on the buildings - hides the terrible brickwork, anyone can do it but requires permission, be of a standard and not be offensive
Local school troops dance show - very aggressive and tiring moves but Luke enjoyed the dirty dubstep section. He also got up to have a short dance lesson with the rest of the willing tourists and looked completely out of whack, but he did have a smile on his face and that’s all that matters.
Comuna 13 hillsides
The tour lasted 3 hours but it was more of a general history lesson rather than iconic places for photos. In Luke’s opinion, this was really interesting with the focus being on cartels in the area, FARQ in particular, and how the area now had 3 left post numerous army interventions to clear out the cartels. These cartels still are very prevalent but they have stopped killing each other and the people after reaching an accord so it is now an incredibly safe area. The big thing about the Comuna is the community and now a place of art replacing violence.
What was crazy to find out was that part of our tip directly went to the cartels and apparently Tayrona is also run by cartels?. These guys were essentially the police of the Comuna, who had little presence and it was made so much more challenging by having only 1 street throughout the hillside. Neighbour problems usually resulted in cartel involvement which was pretty nuts to think about.
The lack of toilet break, waffling tour guide and hunger had made Nicola an unhappy lemon but ok the suggestion of Estoban we went for lunch at Las Delicias De Martha. It was quite amusing getting the outdoor escalator ride up the 6 flights in total.
The views from lunch over the Comuna were great and for P15k the menu del dia was well worth it.
We had a short walk around the top of Comuna 13 before heading back to the apartment. We debated going to parque Arvi but it was quite far away and felt we had done enough walking.
Our afternoon and evening was doing laundry, chilling and making a much improved dinner of fajitas.
Our day plan was to go to Guatape and after debating whether to get a tour there (P99k each) or do it ourselves we opted for the former. Doing ourselves would have been cheaper but the journey times would have been longer and just a lot more hassle than we were willing to stomach. For £10 more we were very happy being spoon fed the experience.
The tour bus picked us up at 7am and the first stop was breakfast on a hill near El Peñol. Not massively substantial but it was decent enough, filled a hole and had nice views.
We spoke to absolutely zero people the whole time we were on the tour, partly because most were Spanish speaking and it appeared we brought the average age down quite considerably.
Second stop was the small town of El Peñol. The highlight was the weird church with a concreted homage to El Peñon de Guatapé into its roof.
The plaza was alright and there was also a Phoenix statue that had no resemblance to the bird.
The third stop was what we were on the tour for. El Peñon de Guatapé is a big isolated rock that the Colombians decided to build a concrete staircase up, totalling 667 steps and being 200m tall.
Our group had seemingly timed it pretty well as we were able to ascend the steps without much faff and queues, bar the top. Luke naturally powered off ahead citing ‘exercise’ and enjoyed passing all those huffing and puffing proclaiming this was the hardest thing they’ve ever done. If that’s true, that should really be a problem indicator (caveated by having actual unavoidable health problems).
The 360 views over the various lakes and reservoirs were really nice.
Naturally it was pretty busy at the top but it wasn’t completely awful.
We had a peruse around the overpriced shops at the top before descending down. This time we got held up the entire way down and Luke even had to run defence on the inside track to stop people cutting past us and a family in front.
Here the cracks in the tour started to show. Organising a group of 50+ people for one person was always going to be tough and at the first real hurdle where people were left off their proverbial leash, naturally there were problems. Some arrived super late to the meeting point and in the end we had to leave 3 behind when they didn’t turn up after half an hour. They did eventually find their way back to the tour of their own accord but it was pretty weak on their part.
Part four was spending some time in Guatapé town. We were actually pretty upset by this because it had gone past 1pm and we were starving. We purchased some emergency Buñuelo, a kind of deep fried donut ball with cheese. Was alright but not really Nicola’s kind of thing.
The town was really nice. The colourful streets were pretty, tidy and it was nice to walk around.
The centre square had the backdrop of, to quote Nicola, ‘actually an alright church’, which had a much nicer interior than most. The pumping tunes from a stage being set up also helped somewhat.
The ‘boardwalk’ (a concrete path around the lake) in town wasn’t all that but it killed some time. Can’t blame the tour company for exaggerating some facts.
Finally it was time to leave for some lunch which was at Don Oscar Parrilla, again near Peñol. The more basic menu del dia buffet serving was quite nice and filled a whole.
Last of the activities was one we definitely didn’t need. It was quoted as a party boat by the tour company and it could not have been less of a party. A ton of people were pretty much knocked out having a nap as we floated down and around a lake which had formed by flooding the old town.
We did get to see James Rodriguez’s nice massive mansion and we’re able to compare it to the bombed out ruin of Pablo Escobar's joint.
On the way back the party element became clear. One of the boat workers came upstairs, microphone in hand and in a highly unusual performance of asking where people were from and bringing this into his song, subjected everyone to an overly loud Spanish serenade. We had no idea what was going on and when he asked Luke where he was from, swiftly ignored England. Who doesn’t love forced fun? It was truly awful.
The day was over and we were back on the 2 hour bus home. We picked up our laundry, had our leftover food and crashed.
The journey to Jardin was expected to take 4 hours so we were in no real rush to get going. We got a cab to the Terminal del Sur at 10am to try and get a bus at 11am.
We did however misjudge this slightly as the bus ended up being full. Their next door neighbour, Coonorte, did have one going at 11:30am so we ended up waiting in the formal ticketed waiting area as it was away from a lot of more unsavoury people in the station.
The bus wasn’t half bad. All the bags went in the back lockup and had lots of legroom on the bus. The allocated seats caused some minor annoyance when we ended up booting two people who were in ours, as we really didn’t want to be old lady’ed again if we were to sit elsewhere.
The drive to Jardin was less fun. While the leg room was great, there wasn’t enough shoulder space and in combination with the reckless driver weaving in and out of traffic along winding hillside roads we were being thrown all over the place.
At least there was a bathroom stop half way.
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