The City of Eternal Spring

We arrived in Medellin early on a Saturday morning on a freezing cold bus, checked in, had breakfast and headed to the city centre. WOW!  This is probably the craziest and most chaotic city we have ever visited.  It seemed liked the whole city was actually an open market with vendors all over the roads selling everything from bibles to porn (the porn is sold just outside the main cathedral). But we didn’t actually take any photos when it was this chaotic. Walking around with the camera didn’t seem like a good idea when you had to constantly weave through people to get through the crowed. Outside the core of the city things got a little calmer.

Medellin is a city of beautiful people! The women are unreal, super-curvy and sexy (lots of tights/leggings). It definitely seemed liked Mother Nature got a little help from a surgeon or two. The influence of Pablo Escobar and the narco-culture was obvious even to us quickly after we arrived. There are tours about Pablo Escobar's life given by his family and several tour companies that get into Escobar's influence on the culture of the city and its lasting affect. We decided not to take any because we didn't want to pay to glorify a criminal.

We spent four days in Medellin and visited most of the tourist attractions: the historic district, Pueblito Paisa (their version of a pioneer village), the Botanical Gardens, Planetarium, and etc. Medellin is the only city in Colombia with a metro system. At 1500m above sea level, parts of the city are built into the mountains and a gondola, which is part of the metro, takes you to these remote parts of the city and to the Parque Arvi, a large natural reserve. We spent a day at Parqe Arvi, which reminded us of the forests in Ontario. Looking back at the photos we took in Medellin, we realized that we hadn’t taken many photos at most of the sites we went to. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s laziness or maybe it’s 6 months of travelling.

It seemed like Colombians party every night of the week. People were always out at night, eating street food and drinking beer just about everywhere. That is one thing Ramanan and I love about South America-you can drink just about anywhere. And the mind-blasting thing about is that all hell does not break loose, no, everybody is calm and friendly and has a great time!