On a Titanic Adventure in Cisneros, Antioquia

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Its importance in brief...



Called the notheastern door of Antioquia, Cisneros gained importance thanks to the railway linking Medellin and Puerto Berrio. The things I have read about the story of the railway sounded to me like one reminiscent of the Titanic; the similarity continues in the sense that as this huge passenger liner sank, the dreams of so much trade and tourism came to a halt due to careless management, security and poverty problems.



The name of the village was coined thanks to one of the founders, the engineer Francisco Javier Cisneros who, together with Jose Maria Duque, were the ones behind the works of the railway in Antioquia. For that matter, there is a marble bust in the village as a hommage to whom the villagers considers a hero!



Located at only 2 hours from Medellin, the village is quite popular among the spa lovers as there are places where you can see lots of villagers hanging out while enjoying the lovely weather, there you go and get suntanned; for what I saw, the villagers are good swimmers and the river near the city has actually become their favourite venue.



Soon my weekend was ending and then I was ready to travel back to Bucaramanga with a ticket I had previously bought before my departure, but little did I know that what I had planned as a brief relaxing weekend would turn into an anxious and angry adventure.





The unfortunate incident with Copetran



My trip back was scheduled to start at 4:00 pm and there I was on the main road waiting to catch my Medellin-Bucaramanga bus. That bus would stop in Cisneros to take me back to Bucaramanga. But for a lack of communication within the staff of Copetran, the company I had travelled with, Medellin Copetran had already sold my ticket to another traveller and the driver refused to let me in the bus as it was crowded. Angry as I was, I had to phone Copetran, Medellin, and they told me that it was not their fault but the office in Bucaramanga; and the only thing they could do was to offer me a place in the next bus which was in the following 4 hours.



Those 4 hours passed and nothing, another copetran bus didn´t stop... 5, 6, 7 hours, nothing... Bloody hell, I waited for 9 hours and it was not until 1:30 am that thanks to the police -they asked the bus going through Cisneros to stop and he picked me up- that I was able to get on the back seats of the bus. What a nightmare!!!. I then complained to the agency´s supervisor in the office in Bucaramanga about the incident and that not only did I have to pay for extra food in Cisneros but that I had also got late to work. He asked me to fill in a form landing the complain. They said they would do something and now 6 months later, they haven´t done anything.



It seems that here in Colombia, they do not give a f... about this kind of misadventures for travellers. And the bad thing is that I have to keep my pride as I don´t have a choice but keep travelling with the same bus company as there is not much to choose from.



The final verdict



The episode of Copetran together with an aircraft incident helped me reach my final verdict and that is, Cisneros didn´t do it for me and I won´t return to the village. The people are overfriendly and that´s a positive point but unfortunately things didn´t work out for me in the best way.

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