Killing Pablo


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South America » Colombia » Medellin
March 16th 2009
Published: March 16th 2009
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After the relaxing times of Taganga an 18 hour bus journey awaited us to reach Medellin. Having exhausted ourselves thoroughly for our last night out we were all feeling tired and ready to relax on the bus and sleep for a majority of the journey, turns out not so much. After sitting through 3 attempted showings of a dubbed Beverly Hills Cop (where they definitely didn´t get Eddie Murphy´s laugh right) they decided that on a bus where all but 3 people where Spanish speaking to put on an awful film in English, with no subtitles, the only explanation of which can be to punish the foreigners and allow the locals to sleep. Eventually the film ended, it got dark outside and sleep was calling, only by this point the air conditioning had been on full blast for the best part of 6 hours and to say it was cold was an understatement. So for the remaining 12 hours we sat with hoods up, sharing a sleeping bag and praying for mercy.

We eventually made it to Medellin, to be greeted by the wonderful sight of the metro system, making travel cheap, safe and even easier than the rest of the travel in Colombia. After attempting our first couchsurfing experience which couldn´t be attained as our host had to leave the city for business purposes, we settled in a nice hostel for a weekend in Medellin.

We spent our time in Medellin doing a few cultural things such as visiting a museum of Modern Art ( well that was it really), we wandered round the city viewing various things including a fantastic cable car ride which yielded awesome views, not justified by our photos. The only downside of this was that the cable car had been brought in to connect the city with its slums and therefore was a ride home for some of Medellins more un-desirable residents. This was ok but had its moments especially when you could see the expansive ghetto (not an exaggeration) just below that seemed to go on for miles and miles and felt as if we were in our own version of Training Day (with Julia playing Denzel).

We were also lucky enough to have two of the best days of the week here, Friday and Saturday, where Medellins young and hip head out to strut their stuff and pay over the odds for unpleasant, poorly made cocktails. There was a whole area of the city dedicated to nightlife which definately makes sense from a security and policilng P.O.V, but does give the city a slightly resort feel, which isn´t very nice. After drinking some Micheladas (basically a beer margharita, which taste much nicer than they sound, well I liked them) and generally hanging out people watching we were done with the nightlife and decided to spend our Sunday, as Sundays should be spent, doing sod all.

We were in luck however as the owner of our hostel was going to have his traditional sunday at the match, and invited us along. Now Medellin F.C are certainly not going to win any prizes (for anything) in the skill stakes but the experience of a Colombian football match is something everyone should try to see. After being HEAVILY frisked on the way in and seeing almost every single scally lad have their weed taken off them by the police we felt a little apprehensive especially as our local man told us that this type of Police presence was not normal.

We needn´t have worried as the atmosphere inside the stadium was excellent with the home fans singing continuously accompanied by a brass ensemble, while all 10 of the away fans were huddled into a far corner of the stadium, which in itself had a 50,000 capacity and was actually pretty impressive even though it probably rarely gets to see too much quality footie. The home team were extremely lucky and blagged a last minute winning goal to appease the frustrated home fans.

After the heady heights of city life we are now heading back in to the countryside for some relaxing walks, fresh air and some potential adventure sports (although I have never exactly been an adrenaline junkie so we will see how much I will participate in that!).


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