Medellin, Colombia - American Adventures 2015 (Part 9 of 9)

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Once I had left Bocas Del Toro, its beaches and the many Kosher shops, I made my way down to David and hopped onto a plane for Colombia. This was my final leg of the month-long trip and to be honest, I was more than ready to go home. For me, 3 weeks is sufficient for travelling.

As the plane flew into Medellin and went through the clouds approaching the airport, I saw a very breath-taking site. We were flying through beautiful landscape, hills the size of mountains and villages propped up between them. It's hard to explain into words but this was the most stunning airport approach I've ever witnessed. Part of me thought it could be pretty dangerous flying through this terrain during the night ... a lot of reliance on electronic equipment.

I made it through customs no problem and met some other travellers at the airport who needed to get to the center of Medellin (which was an hour away by car). Between us we split a taxi cab and went to the famous El Poblado region, the more upmarket end of the city. The other 2 seemed like best friends and when I asked how long they have travelled together, I was told they only just met at the airport. They actually had a cab lined up for El Poblado but I'd done my research and knew there were a lot of dodgy cabs ... i.e. locals using their car to take tourists to their destinations and rip them off. I joined in the conversation with this so called taxi driver and was pretty blunt, asking "Are you going to f^ck us over?" ... "no of course not, I honest guy". Something wasn't right and something inside me made me blurt out: "Are you going to f^ck us?" ... no response, twinkle in the eye, then he went to get his car. We all agreed at this point to do one and run into an official cab, it's worth paying extra ... at least we'll be able to sit down for the rest of the week.

The first thing I fell in love with was the accent. The Spanish accent here is amazing ... it made me feel like the 1st time I heard Portuguese being spoke in Rio de Janeiro ... this was the equivalent for Spanish ... flowing, rhythmical hotness.

I only had a couple of days before my flight back home so I made the most of it immediately. Walking around El Poblado was lovely. In fact it's an amazing place to walk around ... lights on trees, clean and tidy, trimmed vegetation, stunning girls, not too crowded, great places to eat. I got to know the area around me and then went back to the hostel to rest. Unfortunately the beds were terrible here, thin banana-shaped mattresses on top of boomerang-shaped wooden slates ... something I couldn't sleep on. Luckily they had a communal area so I made the sofa my bed during my stay ... on one end people were sat watching movies, on the other end a snoring Pakistani.

The next day it was my birthday. I had made plans to meet up with some people but that didn't work out. I would have told them they always let me down but I remembered I've never actually met them and don't know who they are ... just random FaceBook introductions prior to my arrival. I decided to explore the city and had a geeky day, starting with the famous biological gardens everyone was raving about ... "you must go", "they are beautiful", "i was stunned, i'm going again tomorrow" .... I went there and wasn't impressed at all, it was dead grass, a few plants, overpriced cafe and a local shouting out "mango mango, have some mango". It wasn't a wasted trip ... I did learn that butterflies need the sun to be able to fly, with 29 celsius the optimal temperature.

It was time to rectify my mistake and went across the street to the planetarium. At the entrance was a sign telling me they have now started astronomy classes for the blind ... this was fascination, yet confusing. I kept trying to figure out how somebody who is blind can see the night sky, maybe they put braille on the stars. When I went inside and asked for 1 ticket please, she asked me what age my child was. I explained the ticket was for me. She looked behind me and when I turned around the entrance guards were giggling to themselves. I didn't care, I had such an amazing time at the planetarium, along with the other 89 kids aged 6-12 ... whatever, I love astronomy. I learnt so many things, such as:

- On Venus the year is longer than the day
- Compasses don't point exactly to the north pole
- On Jupiter a storm can last centuries
- On Neptune the wind is faster than the speed of sound
- If January 1st was when the Earth was created, and 31st December 23:59 is now, our ancestors appeared 31st December at 10.30pm ... we are very young 😊

For lunch I was wandering around only to find fast food options everywhere. In Colombia they have this local street food called Arepa ... it's basically the El Salvadorian Pupusa made slightly differently ... with cheese as the main filling. I clogged a couple of arteries up eating these for a while, then decided I needed real food .... and the closest I could find was Subway. Clearly I wasn't the only one thinking this because the queue for subway was enormous ... it came straight out of the shop, onto the sidewalk, onto the road all the way to the other side of the road ... this queue was longer than it takes for Venus to rotate a full circle.

After my geeky birthday daytime session, I went back to the hostel and made some friends. I mentioned to a couple of people it was my birthday and went about my business. There was one guy around who was quite loud, alpha-male type and I really didn't think I'd get on well with him ... so steered clear. There were many self-employed web developers staying in Medellin and I got chatting to these about business, coming up with ideas for the future.

I was chilling out in the evening outside in the big communal garden, researching into butterflies and galaxies, when suddenly I heard singing. I turned around and out came a few people with a candle-lit birthday cake singing happy birthday to me. I was shocked ... I didn't expect this at all. To top it off, it was the guy who I thought I'd least get on with that arranged it all and brought the cake out ... I was touched. Sometimes I have to be reminded to not make judgements on people without giving them an opportunity to shine. This birthday cake brought more people together ... chocolate has that power. A lot of finger-licking and sucking later, we were having a nice evening gossiping away.

It was a contentful day ... to me a birthday isn't a big deal and I'm not a fan of celebrating it ... life goes on and I just appreciate the fact that I have a life, that'll do. However, I was in Medellin so I decided to go out into Parque Lleras, the main social hub of Medellin. That night was fun because I had one mission in mind ... talk to randoms ... and to randoms I talked. Towards the end of the night I wanted to eat something non-meaty and the only place open was this Mexican takeaway on the square. I ordered my burrito and sat down on a table next to an open window. As I'm eating, this drunk girl comes by the window and asks me if I am open. If roles were reversed I would have gotten a slap for saying that ... but I played along for a while and after a few giggles I understood what she meant. The owner of the store had pulled the shutters down ready for closing, so I said to her in Spanish "no we are closed, do one". This process repeated itself ... for every bite of the burrito I had 2 or 3 drunk peeps were wanting in and because I was sat by the window they thought it was my store. I'm not gonna lie ... I liked how this made me feel. Before long I was acting like the boss ... reading the opening hours and telling people "we are closed now, you should have come on time, we'll be open again tomorrow at 3pm ... we will have tacos and burrito specials ... come again". In fact this felt so good I took it a step further, leaning out of the window and shouting out that we are now closed for business .... I was the bossman ... f^ck yeah !!!!

After more shenanigans that night, I went back to the hostel to my sofa bed. Somebody else had the same idea and was asleep on my sofa, so I pushed her off and got into my spot ... at least she'd warmed it up for me. I woke up around 2pm and saw everything around me had been cleaned by the housemaid ... even I felt like I had been feather-dusted. It was my final day here and I had promised people I would be cooking saag/aloo curry and pilau rice. Word had already gotten out about this so throughout the day randoms kept coming up to me telling me they're in. I felt like a drug smuggler ... I'd be chilling in the garden and someone would come up and tell me they need a word, so I'd walk with them around the corner and they'd whisper "I heard u got saag/aloo" .... "yeah I got some, what do you need" ... "I need me some saag/aloo, I want in" ... "sure, come meet me at 8pm, come alone".

I went out in the afternoon with the plan of going up into the mountain villages via cable cars. There is also a national park up there somewhere. My plan was to do this, then on the way back get the gear for my customers ... potatoes, onions, spinach, etc. I arrive at the tube station and I'm hungry, so I walk into the supermarket and there are local women on stalls selling local food. Hmmm, interesting, let's give it a go. I ate some fish and other goodies, then went out to get on the tube. All of a sudden whatever I ate hit me hard and my brain went all cloudy ... I felt like somebody had injected me with something ... I was in Colombia after all. Instead of going to the national park, I spent 2 hours sat on a bench watching kids eat ice cream ... or maybe they weren't real, I was tripping big time. When I was finally in control again, I realized it was too late to go up into the flavelas so just did my grocery shopping and went back to the hostel.

8pm arrived and my customers started showing up, 1 by 1. The mission was a success and everyone loved the food. I had made enough pilau rice to last them a few days in the fridge, yet by 2am it had all gone. I love cooking for others and seeing them happy ... yayyy 😊

It was time for me to pack my bags. At 4am I had a taxi coming to take me to the airport. My holiday had come to an end ... and it had been a fantastic adventure. The journey back was going to be long, consisting of 3 flights: Medellin -> Miami -> Philadelphia -> Manchester.

My 1st flight to Miami landed on time and like a month earlier, I flew straight through customs and was once again asked to go into the special lane and whizzed through no probs, another 3 months on my passport. I was only there for 2 hours before catching my next flight. I decided to surprise my friends downtown so I checked my luggage in for the next flight and hopped onto a train to go into the office. By the time I got there I only had 5 minutes before having to return, but it was worth it to walk in on people who had no idea they would see me again. I said my hello, was given a gift, said my goodbye and went back on the train to the airport. There was a baby in a pram who was crying and crying and wouldn't stop crying ... the mother wasn't happy about it but I witnessed something at this point that confirmed to me why I love humanity. There was a guy on the train listening to music in his headphones and bopping his head to some gangsta rap. When he heard the kid cry, he stopped his music and put on some kids cartoon on youtube and held his smartphone up to the pram ... the kid immediately cheered up and was laughing. This guy held the phone there until mommy and baby got off the train ... such a kind act.

Back to the airport, flight to Philadelphia, stranded there for a long time due to bad weather, flight to Manchester, quick visit with family then a flight back to Portugal. I was back home to my own bed, eating my own food and was happy to be back. For the 1st few days I had trouble communicating and kept speaking Spanuguese ... eventually things started returning to normal.

Central America in 30 days ... such a fun adventure.

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