Artwork everywhere.

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We bused to Medellin, Paul was only frisked once this trip. There were checkpoints everywhere and you need to carry your passport with you. We had quite a slow trip through to Medellin, the bus stopped at every small town along the way. We arrived at the Palm Tree Hostel and settled in. Patty phoned a friend who came over to talk to us and it was organised for him to take us around the city the next afternoon. Medellin is a great big city of 4 million - our country in one city.

In the morning we went to Museo de Antioquia, this is a place full of artworks by Botero. He is an artist that donated lots of his works to the Museum and outside stand lots of his sculptures. He manages to make everything in his pictures fat. Fat houses, people, spoons, hands, fruit. He does fantastic artwork, with very fine detail, just like real, except everything is fat. All is sculptures are fat also. Huge bronzes of fat horses and people. After a morning of high culture we lunched at a really nice vegetarian restaurant in the area and met up with Adriano who was taking us on a tour of his city. He is very passionate, as all Colombians are, about his city and country.

He took us to the Botanic Garden and we walked around this huge place for a time, it was very pleasant to be so far from the city, but right inside it. The gardeners are busy doing up the place, getting ready for the garden festival in August. This would be a great time to visit.
We turtles in the lake and squirrels in the trees.

Across the road there is a large modern concrete type of park. Here there was half moons that were 20 meters apart and if you faced in inner circle and whispered, you could hear it at the other end. It was really strange. Then we taxied to Cerro Nutibara, this is an 80 meter hill in the middle of the city with tourist shops on the top and a miniature Antioquian town. There was a young man doing pencil charactatures and we had our pictures done. (Cost $3.50). Then we had a really good look over the city with all its lights going. Looked like a pixie town with fairy lights.

As a special treat we were then taken to a park in town where all the young people, gays and transvestites hang out. It was not really my scene with loud music and very whacked out looking people and strong marijuana smells and lots of drunk people. The park had sculptures of children playing and was to commemorate the accidental murder of 8 children by police.

We went along to a free concert in a theatre that had Argentinian Folk Dancing and Tango.

That was a very busy day.

The next day a friend of Adriano's, Julian, arranged to meet us at a metro stop and take us for a tour to his place in the countryside and then a walk around a large park. He lived in a very quiet little place in a log cabin, you don't expect only 1/2 an hour from such a bustling city. Because his house was quite high altitude it was cool. He took us for a walk over the neighbourhood and through trees, he said only 20 minutes, but nearly and hour and a half later (this is usual for Colombians - 20 minutes is more than an hour) we arrived at a little town that had an expensive restaurant. He said there was another one 20 minutes away and off we walked for another hour and a half up and down hills to a restaurant that had really nice food.

Then we caught a bus back to town, and walked to a park with more Botero sculptures. There was a Bird of Peace, a big fat dove that had been bombed by Guerrillas and another new one beside it, they had not taken away the bombed bird, but left it as a monument to the problems the country faces. We caught the Metro back to near our hostel. It started raining very heavy and this was a good excuse to stay in that night.

The next day we rested and did odd jobs and caught another night bus to Cartagena.

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