The last part of our Columbian adventures took us to 2 cities, the first, Medellin, for a doctor, the second, Cartagena, for pleasure.
Medellin
Under the violent rule of Pablo Escobar, Medellin was the capital of the world’s cocaine business and had a reputation as the most dangerous city in the world. However, after Escobar’s death in 1993, things started to change, and now it is apparently both accessible and safe for tourists.
But even when the rest of the world manages to turn around its view on a place, I’m often left with the thoughts of what the place once was. As we approached the large city of Medellin, evening was drawing in, it was absolutely pouring with rain, making the only things you could see out of the steamed up windows of the humid bus seem grey, dank and oppressive, making it hard to shake off any previous negative pre-conceptions of the place.
No sooner had we stepped off the bus and grabbed our bags from the hold, we were approached by a tourist official who lead us to a kiosk where we were given a map and directions to our pre-booked hostel. I wasn’t sure what to initially make of this. It was an extremely efficient approach to tourism, but with us being the only tourists in sight, I couldn’t help thinking it was probably because if I were spend any longer than a second looking lost, I could get robbed and mugged! I’m the first to admit, I massively overthink things in these situations and I do need to chill a bit, but I’m still getting used to the stares westerners get out this way, and if anything it keeps me vigilant and aware.
So anyway, our only reason to actually come here was so I could visit the doc at the travel clinic. It was too late to arrange anything that day, so we concentrated on exploring the El Poblado area of Medellin instead. This is the place that most backpackers head to and although this keeps it pretty safe, it unfortunately has also drawn in the likes of McDonalds and other fast food joints, the funniest thing I saw being KFC, but seeing as though it was in Columbian, served up with the statutory rice and beans. We found a hot wings gastro pub where we managed to piss of the waitress by ordering 2 salads, and then headed to a couple of street side bars, before retiring to the hostel for a few games of pool before bed.
The next morning, I was up early and managed to make an appointment with the English speaking MD of the travel clinic. We grabbed a taxi, driven by Medellin born and bred Georgie, who gave us his number should we require further services, and headed up the hill to the dizzying heights of Poblado Alto – an area weirdly full of condos, plastic surgery clinics, frozen yoghurt joints and a mall housing boutique type clothes shops and posh hairdressers. The wealth in the area was blindingly obvious and all the women had dainty handbags and good hair.
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| Medellin from Poblado Alto |
The doctor, Dr. Julio Sanin Robledo, now referred to as ‘Cornholio’ due to the rhyming thing, was a great guy who was obviously clued up on travel safety, travelling 6 months of the year himself, partly as fisherman, partly as orchid collector. He was charismatic yet totally professional and within 10 minutes had convinced both myself and Tim that the risks associated with taking anti-malarials, given our potential destinations and timings, far outweighed the benefits. I left, £30 poorer but armed with a new found knowledge on how to stay safe without the need to take anti-malarials. All the doors to the previous countries we had worried we wouldn’t make it too due to my anti-malarial issues were now officially re-opened. Hooray!
To celebrate, like true Medellinites, we bought frozen yoghurt, I got a haircut and we went out to buy some new clothes. I was a bit worried about going into a hairdressers not speaking the language, but I used the international sign language for ‘fringe’ and hoped for the best. The haircut was a success but the clothes shopping just had us trawling around an area not dissimilarly priced to Covent Garden in London and an unnecessary extravagance, so we opted for the cheaper pastime of beers and travel planning at the hostel.
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| The best frozen yoghurt, covered in white chocolate |
With the docs now done, we were ready to head to Cartagena, a city on the northern coast of Columbia where the next thing on the agenda was to find a boat to take us to Panama. This meant that within a week, we were likely to hit the shores of Central America. Apart from the obvious white sand beaches, jungles, temples, fantastic wildlife spotting opportunities, out of this world seafood and other local delights, we had no idea of what any of the countries really held, so planning was needed.
The next morning, we headed to the bus station to get tickets for our 14 hour journey north to Cartagena. With an overnight journey making most financial sense, we spent some the day trying to clothes shop in the bus terminal and then headed up to ARVI Park. This is a large park area high above the city and accessible by cable car. Unfortunately the marked trails weren’t very well marked, some were closed, some we hadn’t time for and the others were a bit roady, so after a couple of hours we decided to head back down. We did meet an awesome dog on route which made it worth it though.
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| Cable car view of Medellin on the way up to ARVI Park |
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| Our cute companion for our Park ARVI walk |
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| Sharing some biscuits with the hound |
With four hours left to kill before the late night bus, we hoped off the metro a little earlier than necessary to sample some further parts of Medellin’s commercial district, but after 10 minutes of nearly being deafened or run over by the mobile empanada sellers with megaphones combined with the stares, the darkness and the general hecticness of being a white westerner in such a circus of a city, decided to head back to the bus station to wait there.
In summary, I did like Medellin. The disparity in wealth was notable and some places were nicer to hang around in than others. All the girls have the same blond highlights. It only took a day and a half before I wanted a haircut and new clothes. Maybe the plastic surgery is necessary to hide the blindingly obvious cocaine habits of people, new noses, that kind of thing, who knows. The poorer, dirtier areas I’m sure could be sold as fast paced and edgy, and to top it all, there’s an 18sq km park at the top with a lake, zip lines and hiking trails for when the city gets too much. So it seems there’s something for everyone. And to top it all, it’s got a KFC. Medellin, tick.
Cartagena
We arrived in the old town of Cartagena on Thursday morning. The 14 hour stretch from Bogata to Cartagena bus station had been in an overly air-conditioned, but comfy coach. In contrast, the following hour long journey to the old town was in an extremely hot and humid local bus, on frantic roads filled with taxis, bikes and other buses. Ticket boys hung out of the doors on the sides of the buses hollering destinations at passers-by in the hope of an acknowledgement which would result in the boy jumping off the still moving bus and encouraging people on. It bounced a lot and it was really hot. At one point I think I even dreamt back to being in the shed in the mountains!
As expected, within the walls of the old town, the colonial architecture was abundant and the cobbled streets were filled with horses pulling bored looking tourists around. It was very pretty though, if perhaps a bit bubble-like.
After checking into the hotel we set out to find both lunch and a boat to Panama. We headed out of bubble-ville and into the more genuine appearing streets of Getsemani, another part of the city. We found a cheap place for some lunch, but weren’t expecting the cheapness to show itself so obviously as to have the waitress take our order, leave the restaurant and walk back in 20 minutes later with the respective ingredients for Tim’s now seemingly overpriced spaghetti and tuna in a shopping bag!
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| Sneaky beers in a Cartagena restaurant |
We would have laughed but we had also just been told they were also out of beer. Why couldn’t they have bought some of that from the shop too? Anyway, it lead me to furiously go out and buy 2 cans of beer which we then disguised in our sprite bottle and juice glass. I can’t complain about my bowl of beans and meat though. Local and very yummy!
Within an hour of lunch, we had also managed to book ourselves onto a sailboat to Panama for 2 days’ time. The number of agencies and boats now offering this trip through the Caribbean San Blas Islands and into Panama keeps the price fixed at $550, but for a 6 day trip with all meals included, it’s pretty good value.
One agency offered us space on a party boat of 20 leaving Saturday, but another gave us the option of a smaller 8 man boat where we could have our own private cabin, so we obviously opted for that. I was so excited. So, after a quick clean up in the hostel we headed out that evening to sample the sights of the old town, including sunset from Café Del Mar and make our boat list!
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| Sunset from Cafe del Mar |
The following day, our prep for the boat continued and we shopped for things like new shirts and for me, a bikini, seeing as though I’ve had mine now for nearly 10 years and it’s kind of starting to show it’s age a bit. On visiting the agency again that afternoon to settle up, we found out the departure was going to be delayed 24 hours, but we were still welcome to stay on the boat Saturday night if we fancied which was cool.
Knowing that it was most likely going to be fish on the menu for the next week or so, we visited an amazing restaurant that night where I was able to get one of the nicest steaks I’ve ever eaten, which I accompanied with a glass of Malbec. It was so perfect. We followed this up with a big drunken night out in Getsemani together. Something we rarely do on our own, but the cocktails were going down so well. We had a great, long, memorable night out for what we realised was actually our last night out in South America. For that reason, it was a night to say no to nothing and our night concluded talking on the terrace until about 5am.
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| Wine and a massive steak to line my stomach before our last night out on the town |
Looking somewhat bedraggled and vacant we ventured out of our hostel and into the streets of the old town. It was only the afternoon, but even then, drug pushers on certain corners touted whatever we wanted, they have ‘everything’. They couldn’t help me out with a sandwich though, as I replied this is all I wanted.
We walked around the same part of the city a few times before eventually locating the sandwich restaurant we had spied on our first day. However, it soon became apparent that this was the most pretentious sandwich shop on earth, offering only 4 options of sandwich, with one being some concoction of falafels and red cabbage and others containing weird stuff like cheese liquor. Unfortunately having only noticed this after ordering drinks we were committed and I went for the Turkish pitta thing, which ended up all falling out everywhere in a sloppy mess. Being far too much to handle in my current state, I disguarded the sandwich, but I had a bottle of beer, which went down well in a hair of the dog kind of way.
So this was the last beer in old town Cartagena. Soon after, we jumped in a taxi and headed for the port, for our first night on the boat, albeit docked at least for tonight. Cartagena had been hedonistic and fun and a great place to say goodbye to South America in style.
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