Colombia Day 5: Comuna 13 and a long Uber trip

Wow, already day 5! Today I need to finalize my travel plans for the next couple days. The night before I had booked a flight to Santa Marta in 2 days from now. The plan was to spend those 2 days in Jardin, but due to the holidays the buses were fully booked. So I had 3 options: stay in Medellin, leave the next morning at 4am with the bus and have only one night in Jardin or take an Uber. It’s a 3,5 hours trip into the mountains. In Europe that would not be an option with a taxi. Here it’s 90€. I went back and forth and ended up deciding to just bite the bullet and pay the money. But I still wanted to visit the famous Comuna 13. About 8 years ago it was the most dangerous area of Medellin, but not anymore. So I took the metro there and joined a free walking tour.  It was a big group, but luckily our guide had a microphone. It was very interesting and Comuna 13 is really a must visit. However, it is now one big tourist attraction. Like a fun fair, with plenty of souvenir shops, restaurants, bars and instagram spots. And masses of people. But I guess overly touristic is still better than dangerous and poor. I did enjoy the tour a lot and afterwards walked a bit around the area. The views are amazing and it’s fun to go up and down with the free outdoor escalators!

I took the bus & metro back to the hostel and finally finished my trip planning. I’ve now booked the next 7 days! 2 days in the beautiful mountains at Jardin, then a flight to Santa Marta and the next morning I’ll start the 4 days lost city hike. 

The internet had said 2 weeks in Colombia in mid class accommodation and food will cost about 600$, I don’t think I’m hitting this target… but I guess taking a 3,5h Uber trip also doesn’t fit into mid class ;-) the ride ended up being 4h due to the holiday traffic - everyone seemed to leave the city. My driver was super nice and the first part of the trip turned into a Spanish lesson. I managed to keep up some sort of communication :-) The drive was super beautiful, but at some point seemed to never end. I was so happy, when we finally arrived at Jardin. It was already dark and the driver was surprised when the navigation took us out of Jardin again. I knew my hostel was a bit outside of the center, but at one point also got a bit worried. We drove a good 10 minutes on dirt roads that went scarily up and down. What a relieve when we made it. A nice girl opened the door and it turned out that she’s just another guest, and the owner had asked her if she minds to let me and another guest arriving tonight in. She gave me a quick tour of the place and we started talking. Quickly we noticed we are both from Germany. From south Germany. Actually she’s from around Baden-Baden, which is only 20 minutes from my hometown. Crazy small world.

So at this point (at around 7:30pm) I realize that there’s no restaurant anywhere near here and I didn’t have dinner yet. My two options were to take a tuk-tuk to town (which looked really cute and with many restaurants) or the German girl offered me her pasta and pesto that I could prepare for myself. I chose option 3: a banana and a beer ;-) 

At one point I realized that I’m in the same time zone than my Canadian friends Dan & Jess, so I sent them a quick text that I’m in Colombia. 5 minutes later I had a WhatsApp call :-) It was lovely I chat with them, even though we couldn’t talk long due to the bad internet.

Back at the terrace, we spent a lovely evening in this super quiet and beautiful mountain retreat. A bit later Mathias, a Swedish guy joined and we just talked for hours. This relaxed evening was exactly what I needed! We were hoping to talk to the owner about activities for the next day, but unfortunately she didn’t return before we went to bed.




















.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Columbia Day 1

Image
 I can’t believe it. I’m on the road again. After 5 years I’m solo backpacking again. And from my first day I can say I don’t think Colombia will disappoint me. But let’s start with how I got here.  As you may know, my last couple years I spent most of my holidays with Scotty in South Africa. Which was great. What a beautiful country and still so much to discover. And of course great to see the family. And now it was time to go backpacking and explore more of this beautiful time. And as Scotty misses his family and I understand that he wants to go there, we decided to go at the same time, but to separate destinations.  When I started telling people „no Scott is going to SA, no I haven‘t book an organized tour, I’m solo backpacking!“ there were a lot of surprises faces  at that moment my stubbornness kicks in: “remember I’ve done that in the past quite a lot?” But I have to admit that the start of every solo trip has that little bit of “uuh, what am I doing?”  Bu...
Read more

Columbia Day 2: 20.000 steps

Image
 I completely forgot how awful a jet lag is! I was so proud that I had managed to stay up until 9pm (3am our time), but unfortunately I was bright awake at 3am again. Well, at least that helped to get up as I had planned to go with a guy from another hostel to hike up Montserrat at 7am today. So bright and early I had breakfast at the hostel and went to his hostel around the corner. But no one was there, no answer to my messages. Luckily I had met some other people at my hostel who had planned the same hike for today. So I went back to the hostel and ended up leaving around 8:30 with Heine from the Netherlands. They are everywhere those Dutchies.  We walked about 20 minutes to the starting point of the hike and I already realized then: this won’t be easy. Bogota itself is at about 2600m above sea level. And if you spend most of your time at or below sea level in the lovely flatlands called the Netherlands, you quite notice the impact altitude has on your body.  The climb ...
Read more

Colombia Day 8-11: Ciudad Perdida

Image
The Lost City trek, what an amazing 4 days. As usual my preparations were so-so and I didn’t really know what to expect. But I’m so glad I’ve done this trip. With 510€ for 4 days it’s not the cheapest adventure. And the hike is definitely not an easy one. But all of it so worth it. But let’s start at the beginning.   It’s Tuesday morning and I’m at Santa Marta. My tour provider is about to pick me up, but I’m still waiting for my breakfast. The guy had said that the avocado mushroom sandwich can be ready in 15 minutes. Well, those 15 minutes are over. So I ask for a to go sandwich. Sure, no problem. I just have to wait another 10 minutes. At this point I’m 5 minutes late, which really doesn’t fit to my Germanness. Finally I get my sandwich, meet my driver and am on my way to the tour operator office. And by the way: mist of it went into the trash, as it was more a garlic sandwich then anything else… We pick up some other people and first I was afraid I would be with only Spanish sp...
Read more