Medellín

After Salento, we travelled on to Medellín, the second biggest city in Colombia. We arrived very early in the morning and I immediately started exploring the city that day. I had a long walk around the city centre where I saw many sculptures by Botero and found a lot of small cheap shops where you can buy anything you can imagine.

Botero's sculptures

Botero's sculptures

Botero's sculptures

Parque de los Pies Descalzos

That night, there was a football game on in the stadium, a match between the two teams from Medellín, Atlético Nacional and Independiente Medellín. Two guys from the hostel and I decided to go see this game. I have been wanting to see some live South American football all my trip and hadn't gotten around to it yet. So we squeezed into the far too full metro and after a horrible hot journey arrived at the stadium. At the hostel reception they had told us to just go to the stadium and buy the tickets there. This was much more difficult than it sounds though and we had a long adventure to get the tickets. Everybody we asked told us something else about where we could buy them. Even the police working at the stadium seemed to have no idea where the ticket office was. After what must have been about an hour of walking around the stadium, we finally found the place where we could get the tickets and managed to still get the ones we wanted.
The match was really good and the atmosphere was just what I had expected. The hardcore fans in the Northern and Southern stands were going crazy, singing, dancing, jumping, playing music... It was a lot of fun watching this (from a safe distance).

At the football stadium

At the football stadium

The next day, I went to the Parque Explora, an interactive science museum. Very interesting and loads of fun, although full with school classes. On top of the exhibitions, they had an aquarium, a vivarium and a 3D movie show.

A Colombian I had met in Peru had gotten me in touch with a friend of his who's living in Medellín and Thursday night I met up with him for a few drinks.

On Friday, I went to Guatapé with some people from the hostel. We climbed up the more than 600 steps to the top of El Peñol, a big rock from which we had an amazing view over the surrounding lake and islands.

El Peñol

View from El Peñol

View from El Peñol

On El Peñol

Guatapé

Guatapé

At night, I met up again with the Colombian and some of his friends. We went out to a bar and then to a club. A very Colombian experience involving a lot of aguardiente (the typical aniseed-flavoured Colombian spirit, similar to Sambuca/Ouzo/Ricard) and dancing. It was good fun! When the club closed at 4am, I took a taxi home, planning to go to bed. When I got to the hostel, however, some of the guys were still sitting outside. I joined them and it all ended up in a lot of silliness (including arm-wrestling and rubbish-throwing). The last few of us finally went to bed at 7.45am... Random things like this are often so much fun :-)

I still managed to get up at 11 to go to visit some museums. The Museo de Antioquia and the Museum of Modern Art were both really interesting. On the way back I got rained on horribly and got back home soaking wet.

Museo de Antioquia

Museo de Antioquia

As it was Saturday, naturally it was time for some more partying. After sitting on the terrace in the hostel with everybody for a long time, I went to the main bar area with some of the guys. We walked into the first bar that looked nice and stayed there all night because it was really fun. We talked and danced a lot with the locals.

On Sunday, I went to take a cable car up to a hill on top of which there is a National Park. There was a pretty lake and we took a walk around it. Unfortunately we did not have enough time left to finish the loop and had to walk back on ourselves for a bit.

Parque Arví

Parque Arví

Parque Arví

When we got back to the hostel, it was time for the Sunday night barbecue. I ate too much of the tasty meat and salads they had made and then left to the bus station to take a night bus to Bogotá.