Colombia - Medellin

Saturday midday I arrived in Medellin and heading into the centre of the city. I found a parking place for a couple of dollars an hour and walked the crazy busy markets for three hours, dodging traffic, checking out new faces, trying new tastes, including a banana with cheese and condensed milk, called banana con queso y leche. 

I’ve never seen so many clothes stores and stalls. This is clothes central. The city had a festive feel to it.

Medellin also has a reputation for beautiful women and not undeserved, but the ‘look’ of black straight waist length hair with blonde to grey streaks wore thin quite quickly. I was meeting a contact through facebook at a popular spot called Parque Lleras, the trendy nightspot of the city with bars and restaurants. I met with Sebastian and followed him to his house on the northern outskirts of the city.

 Sebastian and his family encompassed all that I have found wonderful about the people of Colombia. He invited me into his home, gave me a bed, cooked meals and told me all about his country and the area he lives in. 

He and his family spoke no English at all so it was a great practice for my Spanish. Sebastian has a small 220cc Bajaj motorcycle from India, a very popular make in Colombia. We rode out to Guatapé the next day, a two hour ride to the east, where there is an enormous hydro-electric dam; not just an open body of water but meandering through a myriad of headlands and islands. It was expansive to the far horizon, an incredible sight, and it provides much of the electricity to Colombia.

 Piedra Penol is a huge rock at the edge of the reservoir that stretches up to a height of 740 metres.

 It was quite a climb up the staircase built on the side and not one for the vertigo challenged or carrying motorcycle jackets. 

From the top the views are magnificent for 360 degrees. 

The township of Guatapé itself is very touristy with a range of stalls selling local handcrafts, with Indian and Chinese-made trinkets stamped with the local name, to fill the stalls. It was a very busy day, being Sunday, interestingly it was all Colombian families and young couples, seldom any other tourists. Colombians like their day spots and holiday destinations it seems. It was a day trip out from Medellin.

 The next day Sebastian’s father took me on a city tour. 

We took the metro train from one end of the city to the other and stopped to walk up to Cerro Nutibara, a hill not far from the centre of the city. 

Here there is a museum about the history of the city through the eyes of the five-generation photographic Duperley family.

A colourful lighthouse at the peak.

and a replica of a colonial town.

There are different trails to reach the summit including an interesting art trail with sculptures from different artists from across the globe. 

From the summit you can see the city in full. It’s very interesting.  The city lies in a valley between two parallel mountain ranges and runs length ways through the valley with urban expansion spreading across the hill faces like a terracotta carpet. 

There are about 5 million people in the greater area and the city has a feel of being very busy and crowded. Life is lived outside, there is not much privacy, with families gathering in the streets to eat, talk and play card games. It is a very communal life with lots of children, young pregnant women, small micro-businesses at every corner and at the entrance to many houses.The traffic is chaotic in places but the roads are good generally. Where they are bad there are roadworks making repairs. It is a very active place, very alive and lively. 

 For the first time on the roads I felt in danger from other motorcyclists. They buzz through the traffic with reckless abandon, oblivious to the dangers of their behaviour. They are so numerous that you can find yourself in a group of ten or more motorcycles moving through the lanes. They like to speed up from behind and sit in your blind spot and on a number of occasions I nearly knocked into them just moving across within my lane. I tend to sit in the centre of the lane when I’m riding to avoid being pushed around by cars, but these guys on bikes get up close and personal. There seems to be no malice in it, they are all smiles and thumbs up when we stop in a group at the front of the traffic lights, but their riding borders on insanity. Sebastian told me some crazy statistic like 500 motorcyclists die per year in Medellin alone, prompting the city to employ speed cameras in lots of places. Likewise the police are very active pulling vehicles over and are everywhere riding two-up in green on their Suzuki 650 singles or v-stroms.

 It was an interesting and again informative day with the 74 year old and one of the family had given him money to pay for me all day so I needed to pay for nothing. The family were all so kind and excited to talk with me and learn about my journey, family and country. I think they saw me as some sort of celebrity, asking if I was appearing on television. 
 I guess to me I am one of many riding a motorcycle around the globe but to Sebastian and his family I represent an almost impossible dream that inspires and sparks the imagination.

 They wanted me to stay so they could take me fishing and visit more places around their city. They are very proud of where they live and keen to show it off to visitors. However on day three I woke up and felt the need to keep going. I now know how time can really get away spending three nights in each place I visit. Central America took me a year because of this, so I really wanted to keep the momentum going. South America is such a big continent and I have some major wet seasons to avoid further east in the Guyanas, not to mention I wanted to see as much of Colombia as possible in the next couple of weeks before taking on Venezuela. Sebastian was disappointed, he was hoping I would be around for the weekend. However it was only Tuesday and I wanted to visit the town of Armenia during the week and stay in Cali next weekend so it was time to go. I realise I need to be more clear up front about the time I can spend with people. Particularly after my two months in Panama feeling a bit stranded, I have a new intensity about my travel, wanting to be on the road more days than not.

 So after the farewells and Sebastian’s mother being disappointed in me for not being Catholic, I took on the Medellin traffic again, heading south into the mountains. I found my way to the autopista, the main Pan American highway south and wondered about the riders before me who had come this direction to discover South America, and how many went straight through without deviation. I turned off to do a secondary road loop and was taken high into the mountains and the coffee country. 

The Andes are nowhere near their largest here but they are big and imposing compared to all but Guatemala in Central America. I love riding through the mountains. The cooler air was still not cold but refreshing and Ziggy loves a climb in cooler weather. By cooler, I mean mid 20s instead of low to mid 30s.