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Published: August 15th 2012
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After getting back from our Panamanian Adventure, Haley took a few days to head to Tayronna National Park (located a few hours away), while I stayed in Cartagena to take care of business. Ahem getting a blood test and getting that Colombian ID sorted out. Luckily, it all went swimmingly. The same guy was working as the last time I was there and remembered me. He switched my A+ blood type in the system to AB+, and told me that my ID will be ready in about two weeks. Phew! I definitely thought I was going to have to jump through fire trying to explain to them the situation and why not to fine me!
We had planned to go to go to San Gil next, the outdoor adventure capital of Colombia, but we realized we didn’t have enough time before Haley needed to get to Bogota to meet the amazing Monica before going back home. So we decided to go to Medellin instead, it always gets rave reviews and I barely saw any of it last time I went. My friend Steve, I met while working at Blue House Hostel and was now living in Medellin, took awesome care
of us. We partied each night with the help of his friends. One of his friends has an apartment really high up with a gorgeous night view of the city –super lucky we got to see that! The first day we wondered around looking at the famous fat statues and then exploring the Exploratorium and botanic gardens.
The next day was the highlight of the trip: paragliding. Medellin is situated in a long valley surrounded by gorgeous, tall green mountains and apparently, has the perfect conditions for paragliding. Now we all know I’m pretty adventures at this point, but jumping off into thin air is not my thing. Basically, I just think it’s automatic death. Like I would love to go sky-diving and keep getting asked to go, but I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to leave the plane. I’ll be like some spider monkey hanging on with all limbs to the door of the plane. But since we had to forfeit all of our adventures in San Gil for Medellin, I decided that I was just being silly about all of this (it wasn’t as extreme as sky-diving anyhow. Stepping stones, right?!), and went.
Of course it didn’t help when my guide/flying-dude-buddy was telling me to just run with him off the side of the mountain and sit into position on his call. Uh excuse me?! Just run off a cliff and sit back?? Are you nuts?!! And they didn’t even get us to sign a waiver or anything! They just stuck a paper bracelet on us with a number to call should we be found in oh say a bush, or plastered to a roof or something. But to my surprise, it was absolutely amazing and serene. Totally graceful, and you didn’t feel those crazy butterflies in your tummy at all. It was such an awesome experience and better yet, it was only equivalent to $80usd, as opposed to the typical $300usd or so –winning all the way around (thank you Colombia!). Landing was a bit rough, however. We had to circle a few times and then I suppose my guide just gave up and decided to go for a big patch of rough dirt, instead of the arms of the other guides on soft green grass. So we came skidding to a halt as he quickly yelled for them to
grab the kite, otherwise we would have gone back up! No broken bones or anything, just a bit of dirt on the clothes –no biggy.
I’ve also found myself jumping into thin air in an entirely different way. Just a little over a week after Haley left, I got screwed over yet again, by another Colombian. That was the final straw for me, I’ve never packed so fast in all my life. I didn’t even say good-bye to all the wonderful people I did meet there (which breaks my heart but luckily, they completely understood). I just couldn’t take it nor do it, life's too short. So who knows where I’ll end up next. Right now, the plan is to give Buenos Aires another shot come September with Monica (she’s also very fed up of the Colombians). I’m going to miss Colombia so very much though. The country that is, not so much the people. It sucks that my experience there brought me a majority of bad apples and has kind of ruined the race for me at this point. However, the country is absolutely gorgeous and there’s so much to see and do. The salsa culture and the
extremely yummy rare and exotic fruits will leave a huge hole in my heart. I highly recommend that everyone go visit and explore all the beauty and fun the country has to offer. And most off all, I'm still really glad I at least went for the kids, if for nothing else. They showed me a whole different side of beauty, and I count myself really lucky to have experienced it. I suppose that all of these rough times in Colombia were really just signs for me to leave after all. Welp, Roger that -finally.
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