Medellin a.k.a. sillicone valley

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The bus to Medellin was shit house they had the air con full blast which Im sure was the reason I had a cold for the first three days of my stay. I arrived on the friday night I was pretty tired, and pretty keen for an early night after my 15 hour trip but that wasnt to be. The first hostel I tried which was full was called casa kiwi and who was sittingat the bar but team ireland , the Irish boys Nicko and i had been hanging with in Cartagena so naturally I felt the need to hit the town with them, and hit it we did! We hit the zona rosa called parque lleras it was a park and surrounding it are bars and restaurants and nightclubs , the park itself was full of paisas ( colombians from medellin) it was such a crazy change from the coast the temperature was perfect the poeple where friendly and noticably the whitest of all Colombians and the women all had fake tits! seriously at least 70 percent of them it must be like a sweet 16 gift there or something. anyway we hit place called blue it was all rock and dance music not a ad night from memory i left early to get a super nachos before i stumbled my way back to the hostel i have no idea how i found it i was very impressed. the next day was a bit of a nothing day i pretty much hung out at the hostel i was a little hungover we had one more night of partying because the boys where leaving for home so we did it all over again the next day.
After my weekend of parties I spent the monday sightseeing through the city, I went to the train station and caught the train to la plaza botero. which is right in the centre of the city the artist botero donated many of his sculptures to sit around the park and plaza they are hillarious as you can see from the photos all of his works are of obese people and animals and anything for that matter. across from the plaza was the museo de Antiouquia i checked it out they had a picasso exhibition on which was very cool. after that i went through the shoping malls and saw a few more churches before heading back to the hostel to cook up a storm spag bol for dinner!!!! yyeeeeaaahrrr!
Tuesday I made my way to the metro cable which probably the most prctical cable car i have ever seen apart from the ones at the snow. this one connected the city to all the poorer barrios so people had easy access the city itself is in a beautiful place its situated in a valley of huge mountains the place is so green and they really take pride in keeping the place clean especially the up market zona rosa , the temperature is between 26-30 all year round and about 19-21. It was a fantastic view from the cable I Later went to Pueblito Paisa its a little town on a small mountain/hill that can be apreciated because it is one of the first towns that started the whole City of Medellin. There are many souvenir shops and food stands that sell cheap snacks which i made short work of.
On the wed i decided to do a little day trip out to a place called la penol which translated means the rock. its about 3 hours out of town and there are many smalls towns surrounding it so i decided to take the bus to the last stop to a little town called santa rafael. it was very quiet in beautiful lush country side the entire area was surrounded by lakes and rivers and they where all the bluest blues i have seen. after having lunch there i got the bus back to la penol i walked about an hour from the first town to the rock . It is a huge granite boulder but when i say boulder i mean its mountain sized it looks like a giant has just walked up and placed it there. they have built a stairway to the top and once at the top the view is beautiful totally worth the walk so i sat and had a mango juice and watched the eagles sore until i was ready to tackle the stairs back down.
Thursday was my paragliding day it was so much fun for 50 bucks it was a bargain! you could take lessons for 80 dollars a day but i just didnt have time the instructor could not speak a word of english so it was time for some broken spansish and lots of sign language haha. it was beautiful up in the air we took off from just outside of the city it was a perfect day for it i was grining from ear to ear once id landed.
later that dat nicko my french mate was arriving and id decided to change hostels to the one he was at. one reason was that my camera was stolen from my dorm lng story short i got outa there and moved into the pit stop, or the pitfall as i called it. It was one of the best places i had seen on my travels as far as hostels go it had two huge buildings with 50 beds, an irish pub ,a pool, tennis court hammocks everywhere a massive tv room with cable and loads of videos, huge kitchen and restaurant. Most of the poepl here had been trapped by the place for a week and had done nothing but party and hang out there, I could see how it could happen. I was glad i had my time for my self because not much sight seeing was done after that day. I met some guys Nicko had been travelling with a kiwi girl and an english girl they where great fun we had 3 full days for parties and laughs. On the saturday i went out for dinner with santiago again for sushi we had so much fun then we went back to the hostel and invited all 12 of the guys we had been hanging out with to come clubbing. Santiago put all of us on the door at the swanky new club out of town it was a brilliant night we partied till the wee hours of sunday morning. sunday was a waste plenty of movies and pizza delivery. Not a regret had by all i had great 3 days at the pitstop but im glad it was only 3 i was ready to leave by monday for my flight to Quito Ecuador, but also very sad to leave Colombia. i had become very comfortable with the place its amazing how one country can be so different everywhere you go the people the scenery the food it was all incredible. As far as saftey goes if you have half a brain and you take the right precaustions you should have no problems. The worst people are other travellers and the police most of the time. It blows me away how such an amazing place with such friendly intelligent people can have such a bad wrap still. Its such a shame because so many people are missing out on one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

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