Medellín

Day 174 – Fat Cherubs and Hare Krishnas

Typically, given we didn’t need to be anywhere in a hurry and would have quite happily kept sleeping on the bus, our bus arrived into Medellín bang on time. Consequently we arrived at Hostal del Sol quite early, but they were prepared for us and gave us a bed straight away. Resisting the temptation to go back to bed we instead did a little research on the internet and then headed out to do some sightseeing.

There was no need for wall hangings at this hostel as it has just been painted straight onto the walls. Nearly every bit of wall space in the hostel common areas is decorated in a similar fashion.

Medellín is another South American city actively expanding its metro rain system (refer to previous rant), so we walked a couple of blocks to the nearest station and pretty soon we were arriving in the old city centre. Firstly we checked out the many bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero which are spread around Plazoleta de las Esculturas whilst woofing down some delicious smoothies from a nearby stand.

Erin naturally chose to pose with the dog sculpture.

Next we headed for lunch at the local Hare Krishna joint. With Erin not eating much meat the Hare Krishnas had fed us a number of times in the last six months. The food is always tasty, wholesome and cheap- thanks smiley people.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the streets and trying to do a little clothes shopping (I’m living in about 6 main items of clothing, some of which are nearly degenerated to the point of making me look like a destitute).

Then for the first time since Argentina we decided to cook for ourselves. More accurately Erin cooked me some vegie pasta while I published the behemoth Galapagos blog post.

Day 175 – Modern and mostly moved

After a slow start we headed for the modern art museum. Rather strangely it is located in an apartment building in the centre of a middle class residential district, this made it rather challenging to locate. When we did locate it, it was only to find that the opening hours had changed and we were an hour early. We decided to wait and when we were finally let in it was to find another surprise, they’ve relocated most of the exhibitions to a new building about three suburbs away. So we looked around the one remaining exhibit and moved on!

Our next stop was a ride up Medellín’s Metrocable, a cable car that is part of the city’s metro system. About five stops out of town is a combined railway/cable car station, where passengers can transfer from one service to another without leaving the public transport system. The cable car serves two purposes, the three stops on the way up service lower class barrios in an area too steep to be serviced by rail, the top stop connects to a tourist service with views over the city and connections to the Medellín public library and a nature reserve. It’s a very clever set-up.

Biblioteca Publica (Medellín Public Library)

The cable car heading through the nature reserve.

Downtown Meddelín with the hillside barrios in the foreground.

Back on the train we headed for El Poblado, the new posh bit of Medellín. We didn’t have a map so we stalked three other gringos from the train station (only the second set of foreigners we’d seen since leaving the Koreans at the border!). When we got into El Poblado proper we saw where all the tourists were hiding, western restaurants (more sushi, yum) and boutique clothing stores abound.

Having satisfied our sushi, beer and shopping requirements we headed for home via a massive Carrefour (supermarket, part of a French chain, the largest chain of supermarkets in the world, they seem to be everywhere but Australia) to pick up ingredients to cook for ourselves a second night running.

A Daphne puppy on a pet store billboard.