Mas de Medellin

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Tonight is my last night in Medellin before heading out to the Pacific Coast for surf. Here´s a recap of what happened in the last 5 days:

Thursday night through Saturday consisted of a lot of partying. The hostel crowd really gets after it. It feels like everyone just parties all night and sleeps all day from wed-sun. I definitely feel a little old for the scene but I met some cool people and had a lot of fun for two nights. Saturday night I stayed in and caught up on sleep.

Sunday was another day taking the metro and cruising the city. I watched the Colombian soccer team beat Bolovia in the Americas Cup (in a bar, not at the game).

Yesterday I took a two hour bus to a place called El Peñol. It´s a huge monolith with 650 steps to the top, awesome views and a nice little workout. For lunch I went to a nearby little town on a lake called Guatape. I took a bus back in the afternoon and then called up Kyle´s buddy Armando that he met in Panama last year.

I met Armando in the centro at 8:00 and hopped on his moto (buns-to-weinies, my first time ever on a motorcycle). We cruised all over the city for over an hour, it was insane. He was talking to me the whole time pointing things out throughout the city. Between the street noise and the language barrier I understood about half of what he said. Armando´s a swim instructor and a super nice guy. We made plans to go out on a weekend when I get back to Medellin at the end of my trip. He´s going to introduce me to some Colombian girls but he made me promise that I can dance better than Kyle did back in Panama.

Today I took the metro-cable up into the barrios in the hills above the city (Medellin lies in a huge valley). The metro has a transfer station where you hop onto these cable cars; their purpose is to allow access to public transportation for the really impoverished parts of the city, but they´re popular for tourists because they afford such amazing views.

A few of the pictures I took in the library that´s located in the middle of the Barrio up on the hill. It´s surreal to see an architectually impressive, modern public library right in the middle of thousands of run down brick shacks. Supposedly like 40% of the local economy has been invested in education in the last 10 years as Medellin has shed its identity as the world capital of drug cartels and murders.

As much as I´ve enjoyed a week in Medellin, I´m itching to get in the ocean...adios.

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