Lovely Medellin

With Christmas fast approaching, I believe it is high time to leave Medellin - amazing city though it is - and hit the Caribbean beaches on the north coast. Tonight I have something of a shlep (18 hours of it) to Taganga, a tiny beach resort near the Venezuelan border. Instead of watching Noel Edmonds Christmas Show and recovering from a Charles Bradlaugh hangover, I plan to be lying on sizzling hot sand and, if I have my way, eating a lobster the size of a sperm whale. For dessert I would like a coconut with a straw in it. To make things even sweeter, hippie luddite Stuart Fraser and his lovely significant other Adele will be joining me on Saturday for a couple of weeks. It is going to be great. Although booking a hotel and a ride to Taganga yesterday was a bit irksome - I spent a MILLION pesos booking two rooms and a bus. A million. Only about 300 quid, but it still makes me shudder a bit.

Anyway. Medellin. To say Medellin is a party town would be an understatement. Rather like claiming Las Vegas only has a couple of slot machines and a one-armed bandit. I have been residing at a brilliant hostel called Casa Kiwi, which is right in the hub of El Poblado, the main bar and restaurant area. I went to a crazy club last Saturday called Carnival, where they play banging techno (often with European DJs) and have a retractable roof for when the sun comes up. There were about 4,000 crazy Colombians in there, who didn't really stop jumping around for about eight hours. I think I lost about a stone in there that night. And there are plenty of other great places to go out too. I went to an even bigger club last night called Palmahiras with a couple of Colombiana amigas of mine named Amparo and Leilana (Raj and Warren, I believe I mentioned them to you the other day). There were about 5,000 people there and I was the only gringo in there. They played a mix of old school rave, Guns and Roses and Phil Collins, which struck me as a slightly puzzling decision. At one point the staff ran around handing out millions of long balloons and everyone in the club broke out into impromptu sword fighting with them and waving them around like nutters. It was like a massive children's birthday party but with grown-ups and aguardiente.

Did a few touristy things too. Went on a day trip to a great little town called Santa Fe, an hour or two out of Medellin, in the region of Antioquia. It was an incredibly relaxed and friendly town, even for high Colombian standards, with some great colonial architecture and amazing Andean views. The day before that I went on yet another cable car to the highest point in Medellin. Although the views were amazing, it was the immediate vicinity which was more interesting. We were right in the middle of a Medellin favela. Favelas are basically South American ghettos, I believe Rio and Sao Paulo in Brazil have the most famous ones. Even in the poorest place in Medellin, the people were still friendly and accommodating, and we felt perfectly safe wandering around.

It is pleasing that I have enjoyed Medellin so much, as it is going to be my home from January 19th for a month. I have just signed up for a month's volunteering at a day centre for kids off the street, where I will be teaching English in Spanish, assisting the regular staff and taking kids out for day trips. Its going to be a massive challenge, but hopefully one that will broaden my time away, as just being a traveller has its limits.

The other thing to say about Colombia - now firmly established as my favourite country in South America and quite possibly the world - is how safe it is. It is so developed, wealthier that you might think (in the major cities, at least), the people ridiculously welcoming and yet with hardly any gringos here at all. Most people are terrified of the image of Colombia - even people who you meet in Peru and Ecuador. Before I left so many people warned me against entering Colombia for fear I would be kidnapped, robbed or murdered within minutes of the border. Sure, there are areas where it would be foolhardy to go, such as the southern Amazon where the lovely FARC reside, but then I don't really fancy walking around Bermondsey at five in the morning either for similar reasons. I think Colombia is slowly shrugging off its dubious image - Medellin, for instance, in the days of druglord Pablo Escobar (assassinated in Medellin by the CIA in 1993), was dubbed the slightly off-putting "Murder Capital of the World". Colombia may well have been a no-go area ten years ago, but now... amazing. I feel genuinely privileged to be here, especially in 2008. In five years time there will be as many gringos here as in Peru, and it will probably be the worse for it. Viva Colombia!

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