Chipechape, a booos and voluminous Medellin

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Day 168 Tuesday 27^th March

After the long haul yesterday we both felt stuffed and so slept in as much as our hard bed would let us. This is only our second hotel in Colombia but we have discovered a disturbing trend with the beds. They are generally only 30cm off the floor and the sheets are short and don’t quite cover you completely, and in fact barely cover the bed, I just hope this isn’t the norm for the country. Our breakfast today was a bit of scrambled egg, really weak coffee, a small piece of unbuttered bread and a large piece of corn bread. The corn bread was very dense and dry and so wasn’t the nicest thing to try and digest for breakfast and so we decided to leave it and try and find an alternative.

After getting our stuff together we headed out the door to look around town. On the street we were once again approached by a local who directed us in the direction we needed which was to the old part of town called San Antonio. This is the old Spanish colonial heart of Cali and is slowly turning into the trendy new travel spot filled with boutique hotels and chic restaurants and cafes. It still has a long way to go before the rich and famous are spotted here and is still fairly run down but it does have a great vibe. Unfortunately it appears the cafes, restaurants and hotels are already imposing the high prices before the rush. We had looked at staying at this end of town but found a lot cheaper down the road and the café we chose charged a fortune for coffee and cake, we felt like we had been transported back to Balmain. The ambience of the café was lovely so I guess that was worth the extra money.

From San Antonio we wandered back down into the centre of town trying to get a handle on Cali and its small amount of sites. The town isn’t exactly attractive and there is a certain edginess with the place but the people seem friendly and they all do seem happier than the mob over the border in Ecuador. A lot of the streets are filled with street vendors selling all sorts of plastic crap and food, but the strangest thing we saw was the guys set up in a plaza with typewriters. There were about a dozen of them all with a small table and chair with a typewriter and people would come over and ask them to type stuff up. We sort of guessed that people may require legal documents typed and would need these guys to do it for them. In this age of computers it seemed like such a throw back.

After wandering around aimlessly we headed back to our room for a short break. Hadn’t spotted anywhere else to go for dinner so ended up at the same place but tonight Shelley had trout and I had a steak, and both were sensational. The restaurant appears to also feed some of the poorer people and we had a woman behind us who started getting quite animated with her cutlery as the night went on so I had to keep a watch out so Shelley didn’t get a fork in the back of her head. She later tried to feed a kitten off her fork and the young waiter ran over and tried to explain not to do it, not that she listened. We are now becoming the centre of attention at the place and in particular our habit of having a beer with our meal which we don’t think is the done thing in Colombia. At one point our waitress came over and asked us in Spanish where we were from, and when we told her Australia she sort of nodded her head like “I’ll have to watch out for those ones in future”. We stayed for an extra beer once we finished our feed and then headed off back home. We have found out that although the Columbian do not drink with their meals they sure do after and party late.



Day 169 Wednesday 28^th March

Where we are staying in the very centre of the city is a bit rough and so today we thought we would head out to another suburb that houses Colombia’s largest shopping centre called Chipichape (pronounced chippychappy). This is supposed to be the flash end of town full of lovely shops and beautiful people but before heading out there we decided to google it and along the way found out some interesting facts about the city of Cali.

Crime is a serious problem in Cali, and last weekend there were 24 murders in town, and the local online paper had a good article about how things are getting worse and the Government isn’t doing a lot to stop it. According to Wikipedia there has been a hefty upswing in the crime in the city over the last few years and to quote them directly “Between 1 January and 1 December 2011 there were 1870 intentional homicides in the inner city of Cali, which is considered a 5%!i(MISSING)ncrease compared to 2010.” Thankfully the bulk of these murders are between rival drug gangs and although I cannot confirm completely I am fairly sure none were tourists. I remember back in the 1980’s and 90’s Colombia was labelled as the most dangerous place in the world but thankfully things have settled down from those bad old days and we hope for everyone concerned this increase in murders is only temporary. Probably the scariest statistic on the wikipedia site was the claim by Colombia's most influential weekly magazine, Semana, that there are over 1,700 assassins working for various groups in the city. Sort of strange to think there are so many people walking around a town that make a living from killing others, again let’s hope that becomes a dying occupation (no pun intended).

Anyway after reading all those sobering statistics we headed out the door but now with a whole different outlook on the town. Had decided to skip our average breakfast and we just grabbed the first taxi we saw. Our drive out to the Chipichape shopping centre took us through the suburb of Granada which is filled with flashy and seedy looking bars and restaurants and in general looked a lot better to the area we are staying in. After a 20 minute drive we arrived at our destination and rather than a large block Westfields type shopping centre, Chipichape is a mainly sprawled out place with lots of open areas. It is a bit confusing to walk around but Shelley being a seasoned shopper didn’t have too much problems. It was about 11 by the time we got here and hardly anything was open so we decided to grab a coffee first before looking around. We had thought today was going to be more about window shopping but we ended up buying some more cargo pants as our existing ones are just about threadbare after 6 months of travelling. Shelley also picked up a few more bits and pieces before we stopped for some lunch and had a great although expensive stirfry.

The shops were not as big as we expected and so in the afternoon after we had seen everything we thought we might catch a movie but not much was on and so we opted to head home. It had made an interesting diversion from downtown and the usual sightseeing and we had also came here as this was supposed to be the spot to see Cali’s and therefore Colombia’s most beautiful women but today they must have decided to stay home and do their hair, so for the moment I will stick with Shelley.

Our taxi driver back was a bit of a shark and took us the long way home but it still only cost 10,000Colombian Pesos ($6). This is probably also the hardest part about Colombia and that is getting used to the currency. We have had to go through so many countries and with each new one comes a new conversion rate. Ecuador was great because they have adopted the American dollar (still don’t understand how you do that, but they have), but the conversion rate for Columbia is 1 Aussie dollar = 1845 Colombian Pesos. After a while you do get used to doing the mental arithmetic but you still have to be on your guard and in particular making sure the note you hand over is a 2000 note and not a 20000 note.

We were dropped off at the town’s main square a few blocks from our hotel and thought we would walk around and see if we could find a bar to get a beer but without any luck, (the centre of town just doesn’t have them) and along the way we passed the restaurant we have been eating at. We were on the other side of the road but the owner spotted us and was singing out to “Australia come here for good food”. We had to shout back that we would see him tonight which we did. We of course had to go back to our room and start our packing first and because we had such a large lunch we waited till later before going up. Of course when we got there we got the usual first class service and once finished we told them we were leaving and said our goodbyes. Cali has been a very interesting city, not a lot to see and I doubt we would come back but it was still a good experience.



Day 170 Thursday 29^th March

Alarm went off at 6.30 and we quickly jumped up and readied ourselves for moving town. Our bags are just about to burst now and I am positive mine now weighs close to 30kgs. As always once we get our backpacks on we announce that we are getting too old for this but we are still loving it, it’s just that next trip we will invest in a wheelie bag. Skipped breakfast thinking we would pick up something at the terminal (but it wasn’t to be) and had no dramas checking out or snagging a taxi to the terminal. The biggest problem we have is with our accents and trying to get people to understand where we want to go. The bus terminal is written the same for English and Spanish but in Spanish is said slightly differently with bus sounding more like booos, they also sometimes call it an omnibooos, but it is pretty straight forward, but for the life of us every taxi we have got we have had to play charades. No matter how many ways we said bus, boos, omniboos and terminal the taxi driver just stared at us blankly. Finally I had to write the words out before he got it, and we were underway. We have spoken to a few locals over here and they claim that it is the Australian accent that gives them grief and I know our taxi driver wasn’t playing around with us as we got to the “booos terminal” in record time and price, I think I just need to find my inner Spaniard and practise my very best accent.

At the terminal we were once again presented with choices on who to go with and finally settled on Bolivarino which looked like the flashiest bus company of the lot. Apparently the bus companies supposed to display in their windows their crash and fatality statistics for the month and year but we have yet to see it, and in some ways I guess it is better we don’t know. The girl at the counter told us we had a choice of a bus leaving at 6pm or one right now so of course we chose the latter and after getting our tickets a guy rushed us upstairs running to get us to a bus that was waiting. No sooner did we sit down than we were underway, with no time for breakfast or to even buy more water for our trip.

The bus had to battle through traffic to get out of Cali, but once underway our driver was flying along like a demon. Most of his stint at the wheel was spent eating chocolates, texting on his phone, playing with the bus DVD player or a combination of all of them while he steered with his knees and elbows. Combine all this with a narrow potholed mountainous road, filled with slow moving trucks and kamikaze overtaking on blind hairpin bends and you sort of get the picture of what the trip was like. The best we could do was not to look at the road but just watch the passing scenery which was magnificent. Our trip between Cali to Medellin passes through Colombia’s coffee growing region and it was picture perfect coffee country. The plantations ran up and down the rugged terrain and in areas we have no idea how they could grow and harvest their crops as it looked even too steep to walk on. The whole area was interspersed with banana plantations and small villages along with heaps of landslides, indicating that some people had pushed their luck with land clearing. The road we travelled on was either winding up a mountain or down one and because of our driver we were constantly being flung around. Shelley put her seat belt on just so it would hold her to her seat.

At about 1pm we finally stopped at a roadside café and everyone piled off. We tried our best to ask the driver how long we had at the stop but he just grunted something and walked off, so we wandered in and picked up an interesting lunch of a sausage with a boiled potato and a corn cake. We could have possibly picked up something better but it was all a bit confusing and our lack of Spanish once again had us at a disadvantage. As per usual bus journeys everyone finished their lunches ahead of the driver and we had to wait till he was done. Thankfully the company we had chosen only allows their drivers to stay behind the wheel for no more than 4 hours so we had a replacement driver after lunch and he wasn’t quite as radical and paid a bit more attention to the road. The rest of our trip was just as scenic and occasionally as hair raising but thankfully we made it into Medellin in one piece at about 5.30 after passing through a brief storm. The town actually looks really pretty and rests in a wide long valley but is slowly building up the sides of the adjoining mountains. The population of Medellin is approx. 3.5 million but driving into the town I would reckon it is a lot larger.

Got dropped off at the Southern bus terminal and grabbed a taxi without any dramas for the short journey to our hotel. We are staying at the Florencia Plaza Hotel in the touristy suburb of Poblado, which is filled with restaurants and bars. After Cali we were looking forward to a few more choices to when it came to dinner time. Our taxi driver got lost a bit before we finally got to our hotel and because we had prebooked it we had no dramas getting a room. The place is really lovely and the staff were falling over themselves to help us and were super friendly. The room is small but clean and well presented so it was a great choice. It was after 7 by the time we were in the room and although we both felt stuffed and just wanted to hit the sack we decided to have a walk around and get a small bite to eat. The area of Poblado is a really large tourist spot although so far in Colombia we have hardly seen or heard any other foreign tourists and guess at present most tourists are from within South America or Colombia itself. The footpaths are wide and well lit and we spotted the occasional security guard so it feels fairly safe. Medellin like Cali has seen an upswing in the murder rate but apparently no one has been murdered in Poblado but it is mainly in the outer suburbs where rival drug gangs have large shootouts. Despite the spike in crimes it is still nowhere near as bad as back in the 1980’s when Pablo Escobar called this town home, and you can only hope things settle once more for the people of Medellin.

We ended up walking around for an hour before settling on getting a kebab and later stopped at a bar for a beer. We still don’t know why but spending a day on your arse on a bus is so exhausting, and we barely finished our beers without falling asleep. When we got back to the hotel it felt so good to crash although we could both feel the room moving still after our long bus journey.



Day 171 Friday 30^th March

The bed felt so good it was hard to get up and get moving but by 8.30 we were up and downstairs for breakfast. Once again we were reminded that breakfast isn’t important in South America and it seems less important in Colombia than anywhere else. The staff here are great though and we feel they are putting in the extra hard yards for us foreign tourists. After brekkie we went back to our room to demolish our bags and prepare for a day of a walking the area. Medellin doesn’t have a lot of attractions and along with Cali wasn’t a priority destination for this trip but they are more just stepping stones to the Caribbean Coast. Tomorrow we will probably head down to the centre of town but today we thought it would be good to hang around the local area.

We left the hotel and 3 doors down came across a laundry so we quickly scampered back and grabbed all our dirty clothes and dropped them off. We hadn’t come across a laundry so far in Colombia so we had piles of the stuff. The laundry wasn’t exactly cheap and was going to cost 52,000 pesos ($30) but it is still heaps cheaper than the rate at the hotel and we had to have it done regardless. After dropping off our smelly clothes we wandered up the road to a photo place where we put our underwater camera from the Galapagos in to get developed. Thought it was best to get the film processed here rather than carry the camera home, but ended up having a very confusing conversation with the woman at the shop. She wrote out to us that the photos would cost 10,000 per hour to process…all seemed rather weird. She didn’t speak English and tried to do some English translations on her computer that still didn’t make sense. In the end we left the camera with her and hopefully will pick up the photos tomorrow afternoon, God knows what it will cost us.

We then wandered down the hill to the main drag in to town where we had spotted a large shopping centre yesterday but when we got there the place was filled with computer and tech stores as well as several sex shops. We both found it amusing to be walking past stores looking at the windows and seeing computer, laptop, battery operated dildo, speakers, it all seemed rather random. Not really looking at carrying another laptop nor sextoys with us so the place wasn’t of much interest so we headed back up the hill to near our hotel. Wandered around for an hour or more checking out what was around before picking up a burger for lunch and then headed back to the hotel. Need to get bus tickets to Cartagena for Sunday and because that bus trip is 13 long hours we wanted to get some details on times of departure before rocking up at the terminal on Sunday. The staff at the Hotel were able to give us some info from a website and later back in the room I was able to work out more. Had hoped we could pick up tickets somewhere close to the hotel but it now looks like we will have to take a trip out to the Northern Bus Terminal tomorrow.

At 7 we headed out on the town for dinner and managed to grab a great feed at one of the many restaurants near our hotel. The drinks were expensive so we moved onto a nearby bar, which we had drank at before. Shelley wasn’t keen to keep drinking beer so thought she would have a tequila and lemonade instead. The barman made out that he knew exactly what she wanted, but instead she got a shot of tequila with a slice of lime. We have read that Colombian don’t tend to drink mixed spirits but drink them straight and if they are having a big night will buy a whole bottle at a bar and there favoured drink is rum. Another favourite is aquardiente, which is an aniseed flavoured booze that runs at 27%!a(MISSING)lcohol and is sold in mini casks and taken as shots. At the table behind us were 3 girls and 2 guys who bought a cask, which they all knocked back in minutes and then went another, and before we (or they) knew it they were all up dancing and singing and falling all over the place. We stayed at the bar for a few drinks watching a local football match and watching the next table quickly descending into oblivion, till we thought it was time for us oldies to get home before it got too messy.



Day 172 Saturday 31^st March

You would think that Columbia would have the best coffee, but unfortunately they export all the good coffee leaving the low grade stuff for themselves and unfortunately no one knows how to make a decent cup. Coffee here and in Ecuador consists of a cup of warm milk with a dash of Coffee….yuck. So after breakfast with no coffee we picked up our laundry and went to see if our photos were ready which they were not, but at least we found out the photo shop closes at 8.00pm. We headed to the Metro station to go to the Bus Terminal Norte for tickets to Cartagena, the metro is cheap, clean and appears to run regularly so it is a good alternative to taxis. At the bus terminal we chose Rapido Ochoa who the hotel had recommended and instead of 5.30am we opted for the 8.00am bus tomorrow. Jumped back on the Metro to the City centre to have a look around and walked through Plazoleta de las Esculturas which contains many bronze statues by Fernando Botero a famous Colombian artist born in Medellin. Here is also the Museo de Antioquia which contains more of his statues and many of his paintings. These are very interesting as all the people are depicted voluminous; some may say fat but not the artist. We both liked his work and were glad we went to the Museum as it was not planned.

We continued to walk around the city in the crush of market stalls lining the streets and roving vendors trying to sell us an array of things. It was hot and crowded with nothing of interest to us so we decided it was time to get the metro back to Poblado. From the metro it is a 15 minute walk up hill to the area that our hotel is in and we thought we would see if the Galapagos underwater photos were ready. As soon as she saw us she pulled out the photos which were very disappointing, but it is a disposable underwater film camera which never give clear photos. We later discovered that a whole section of photos were missing and when we checked the negatives they had been ruined so we are not sure if this happened when they tried to open the camera case. We went back to the hotel to rest before going out to dinner, tonight for our last night in Medellin it is a cheap meal at a café and a few drinks at the bar afterwards.

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Photos

Cali
Streets of San Antonio

Cali
Iglesia de la Ermita

Cali
Typewriter Men

Cali
Iglesia de San Francisco

Cali
Outlook from our window

Medellin
Main street of El Poblado

Medellin
Shelley with a Colombian Tequila and Lemonade

Medellin
Scott with one of Botero's Statue

Medellin
Shelley with "Gato"

Medellin
Another Botero Statue

Medellin
One of Botero's paintings

Medellin
El Poblado at sunset

Comments

[traudy glasencnik]

Those boooooooos rides!!!!
Frightening!! Medellin sounds nice. 24 see you laters in one week, drug related or not. EEEEK! If thats not enough to frighten the tourists away, I\'m not sure what is? The booos rides would be helpin. Stay safe x