Medellin

Sunday / Monday: The overnight bus drops us off at 09:00am. From the appraoch into town, we notice how vast this city is, set among massive green mountains on all sides. Medellin is the 'second capital' behind Bogota and we have been told it's a modern city. On the metro to our hostel (on the other side of town), we notice that shacks are built from the rivers edge to the mountain tops where the poor live. We notice significant numbers of homeless and litter especially at the waters edge. In contrast to this, the metro is very modern and some parts of the centre of town are landscaped and generate a completely different feeling.

From books we have read, we are aware that there are a large number of 'desplazados' (the displaced) in Medellin, being those forced from their farms in the countryside by the recent (and still on going) battle between the FARC forces, the paramilitaries and the army; Medellin offers help & hope to these, or so we have been led to believe.

The hostel appears nice, but we end up with the last room...a box room on the stairwell landing with a good 30cm gap between the top of the walls and the ceiling. The result, a very noisy room. Definitely the worst so far, but the location and facilities (out side the room) are decent with friendly staff and so we decide to stick around for a few days and to try and explore the city a little before moving onto Salento.

The best area by far was Zona Rosa which we had a great time exploring. We regret not staying in this part of town as it's where all the cool kids hang!! We treated ourselves to some good Cuban food to compensate. Our hostel was near the Sur Americana Metro stop and although it lacked the bars/cafes & buzz it did have a Carrefour much to Lynne's excitement where we managed to purchase some long awaited Tea bags. This part of town is fairly middle class and we enjoyed a few runs in the morning amongst the locals around the football stadium area.

After two days we had to move onto Salento which is a shame as we would have liked to explore Medellin a little more.

Medellin is the home town of Botero, a famous Colombian artist, who creates statues & paintings of fat people mainly....