Today primarily is a travel day. I went to the bus terminal in Guatape, figured out I should best take the 11:30am bus to Medellin, the bus ride will take roughly 2 hours, so I would get to town just before my next Airbnb check-in. My time in Guatape has been really active, not in a bad way, in fact, I am glad I did what I did. But I can certain use some chillout time for this coming week. We’ll see, I have a tendency that I will end up doing something, I am not good at just sitting around. By the way, my stomach felt much better this morning after waking up. And the diarrhea has stopped too. What a relief!
The bus ride only costs COP 16000 (US$4), they are so cheap and they go very far. In this tiny bus sit maybe 20 some people, plus a few standing spots. There were people like me who travel from terminal to terminal, other just hop on and hop off, I could not figure what their system since it did not say anywhere. Initially it was only 3 or 4 people, it filled up along the way, and from time to time, there were people coming on board to selling you bread, cheese (that guy pretty put a cheese in front of my masks asking me if I want to try, no gracias.) There was karaoke performer, a woman who sung some shit, it was quite shitty. I was taking it all in. My passport and some cash was in my backpack in the trunk. I was going to take the small day bag with me to keep the important stuff, but things happened so far, the bus wanted to move, so I just dropped my backpack in the trunk. It was fine in the end. Getting closer to Medellin, I could feel the traffic heavier and heavier, in fact, for the last 20 mins or so, we were just on the outside of the terminal of norte and the bus to make that turn to the terminal. Insane! The pollution was kind of bad. Medellin is the second biggest city in Colombia.
I don’t see any taxi, try uber did not find anything, with the heavy traffic around the bus terminal. I might as well take a metro train, Medellin has a metro train system, yay! Love it, love it, love it. I walked to the train station in about 10 mins or so. Got their transit card called Civica. Found my platform and off I went, muy fácil. Got to Poblado station, that is closest to my Airbnb, since it is kind of a hill, I wanted to take a taxi or uber to go up. Here we go again, no uber to be found, I hopped on a taxi, kept asking the taxi driver how much, refused to confirm, we were looking for my Airbnb, we lost, circled around and finally found it. He said 15, I gave 20, no charge. Later, Sergio my friend I met later told that, taxi driver are required to meter. I will try that next time.
Checked in my Airbnb, the lady reminded me if I am bring any guest, SHE must have an ID if she is Colombian or passport if foreigner. Ok, Madam, we will be fine. My room is on the 14th, on a hill with a view, imagine that! Oh my god, this is one of the best views I have from an Airbnb. Maybe this is the second best, the best one I can recall is still the B&B in Valparadiso in Chile. Washed up a bit and then I went down to walk around the Poblado neighborhood, just to get a sense where things are. I got some money exchanged, stopped by Starbucks for a coffee.
While I was all chilled in Starbucks and all in a sudden, a group of protests running into Starbucks, holding signs, chanting whatever they were chanting. I was wondering whether they were anti-foreign coffee franchise, what’s the hell, should I have gone to a Colombian coffee place instead?! After they left, they continued marching the street, I followed along to snap a few picture. My friend told me that those are anti-vaxxer, oh hell! I thought US is bad, this anti-vax actually happens everywhere. Sigh!
Went back to Airbnb, rest for an hour before meeting my friend Sergio who I got to know back in Boston. Very kind of him to offer to take me to a cool spot to see the city, Mirador El Cielo. It was beautiful at night and we had some grilled foods. He took me to a supermarket to get some apples, I am so missing my daily apple, but here they only have two types of apples: manzana roja and manzana verde, hah, what?! I told Sergio that in US, there are easily 10 types of apples found in any regular supermarket back in US. He took me back to my Airbnb. It was great seeing him briefly after a few years. Things have changed so much especially the past two years in specific.
Before I headed to bed, I attempted to use the washing/dryer combo machine, it is in Spanish, but I got google translate, I did not flood apartment, yay!
