Medellin

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We left the beach, headed to Guayaquil which is one of the main cities in the south, and where the main airport is located. We stayed a night there before our flight in the morning at a hostel called The Funky Monkey. The guy who owned and operated it was one of my favorite characters thus far. Although the meeting was brief, it was definitely a memory. He was about our age, kinda frumpy fellow with awkward eye contact, his hostel consisted of a couple of rooms, a courtyard and a miniature pool. His aloof manner and really unique accent just made us chuckle....I guess its one of those hard to explain things. I wish I had a picture. The Hostel was right next to a Super Mall, beautifully air conditioned and it even had a Movie theatre with english movies!! We saw 127 hours......

Next was the most epic flight in since the beginning of time. It only lasted 50 minutes but blew our minds. We flew from South of Ecuador to the North along the avenue of the Volcanoes ( remember I wrote about that in the blog about Baños, we drove along the Highway of Volcanoes but it was too overcast to see anything ) and we saw EVERYTHING!
The views of the Andes and 3 or 4 of the Volcanoes from a flight point of view was just too much to handle....I hope the pictures give you an idea.

We landed in Medellin, Colombia and took a bus to the area of the city we were going to stay in called Pablado. Its kinda a hip little area with artsy cafes, great little boutiques and tonnes of restaurants and bars, I was impressed how Metropolitan it was. We went out, ate amazing steak and paella, walked around and soaked it all in. In the morning we jumped on the Metro ( kinda like the sky train, that stretches throughout the entirety of the city ) and jumped on and off checking out different parts. Which is kinda crazy thing......imagine doing that in Vancouver as a tourist, getting off at Commerical and checking it out, and then Main street and walking around ending up near hastings and feeling like where the hell am i, and then jumping back on and ending up downtown ect....It was kinda like that except in Colombia. We sampled local food, such as these things called Bunelos, which are spherical buns with cheese, and they serve coffee all over the city out of little carts with thermos´s, it in tiny litte shot glasses with way too much sugar, I had no idea Canada and US are the only countries ( i´ve been to ) that serve their coffee in proper grande style mugs, with free milk.......here they charge you extra and give you a big glass of it ?? wheres the creamos ?

We took a cable car / Gondola up and over a neighborhood in Medellin that was apparantly the most dangerous area of Colombia in the Pablo Escobar, cocaine, kidnapping days. It´s now being renovated and revived into a normal neighborhood since the goblins and ghouls are gone, well sorta gone. It looks like a typical poor South American shanty town, but it was kinda cool to let your mind wander and imagine what it was like back in the day on the streets there as you are sitting in the cable car staring out at peoples houses.

Medellin was great, but we really came to this country to check out the Carribean Coast....Hasta Luego

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Photos

Flight
Amazing view of the Volcano

flight
another killer volcano

flight
better shot

i bought a pillow
its the anne enns in me

same
the photos are kinda blurry because there was a tint on the glass inside the cable car

Helado in Hell
some helado ( ice cream ) in the hottest, boringest old cities near Medellin.....this was the only thing that made the 2 hr sticky bus ride worth it

Jugos
one of the zillions of fruit juice stands in ecuador and colombia, exotic fruits, puro ( pure ) or with water and suger , or milk

Comments

[dick enns]

hi
can hardly wait until you get home love, dad

[Allison]

Coffee
Beautiful pictures! Kim, sounds like they have Spanish coffee there, and not the yummy kind they light on fire like we had at Huber's when you guys visited a while back. Your description sounds like what Andy had in Spain and since you also had paella they must have more Spanish cuisine rather than Mexican?? Love ya!