Day 9: In All the Starbucks in the World, these Anti-Vaxxers Had to Come to Mine

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!

Day 8: Steve Said, “You Made It!”

After yesterday’s excitement, my body has allowed myself to sleep all the way to 7:30am! So far I have not really had any real sleep-in kind of day, partly because of the street noise, for the case of Cartagena where I had a great quiet room, but I chose to get up early to avoid the crowds for pictures. This is my last day in Guatape, since I had finished all my planned activities yesterday and after some research I ditched the San Rafael idea, even though there are many beautiful waterfalls and stuffs near that town, it is not something I can just walk from bus terminal to those area easily. Looked around on Tripadvisor for other options, I could do some full day tours to other wonders in the regions. Full day may be too much of a commitment, I like to keep today light. For half tours, I could do coffee farm or another half day hiking tour. I thought, let’s go with the coffee farm, could be romantic, learned about how the coffee is produced and sip some coffee for a few hours, then I go back to the apartment and enjoy the view in the afternoon. 

It was already 8am, and the tour actually starts at 9am per the website. I was calling and whatsapp-ing the tour group, everyone is using whatsapp here by the way, taxi driver, people, amigos, familia, tour guides, even dogs use whatapps here, potentially their emergency call is on whatsapp too. Finally they got back to me around 8:30am, I was already out to go get coffee and breakfast. They said they could pick me up at 9:30am, since I am only one person, it will be slightly more expensive, but it was really still US$30. That is nothing. In addition, I mentioned that I have already seen the rock, so “Steve” the guide (you will see in the picture below, there is no way he is a “Steve” in a million year! Hasn’t he seen Steel Magnolia before picking such a name) said that there are some nearby waterfalls (one 7 mins away, another one 15-20 mins away) we can do some hiking too. I said Perfect. I love that mixture of coffee lecture with a little physical exercise. Or so I thought.

 

 

He came in style with a driver, I hopped on his tuc tuc. About 20 mins, we got off at some rural area and started hiking down a very steep hill, I was already thinking it would be a bitch coming back up. I kept on keeping on, following him, the paved 45 degree slope soon became unpaved, and then really rocky and windingly. It probably took us another 20 mins hiking down the hill to the coffee farm, his English was pretty good, and he had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. It almost like a transparent golden brownish, it is not green, not blue. I don’t think I have seen this color before. It demanded attention. But para mi, the attention stopped at the eyes. He explained various things, about fruit, leaves, climate, coffee, somewhat interesting. 

 

 

 

 

When we got the farm at last, there were a group of kids welcoming us, they knew the guide obviously, they were cute. Then we went into this gate of someone’s house, the farmer’s house. There were all like hola, ciao, como esta, que tal to each other. I was just taking all in, I like that, seeing people interact without me being the center of attention. Here came the farmer, he was a skinny man. The woman offered me a sugar cane drink. Soon, we begun the coffee tour, they explained to me about 7 or 8 phases. Showed me exactly what phase does what to get the coffee from planting to our tables. I even got to harvest the cherry, I did not know that coffee beans was from cherries! I tried eating the cherry and spit out the coffee bean, I operated their machines. I even helped packing the coffee and of course, got to sip the grounded coffee just from yesterday. At the end, they did ask if you want to buy some coffee, I bought the smallest one, it was like a dollar or two. I gave them 4 dollars just to be polite. I don’t even know whether I am allowed to bring food product back to US I don’t think so, I probably would have to declare it. I think I am going to just drink it in Bogota. 

After the coffee tour part, it just before noon, we still have an hour and half, we decided to hike to the waterfall, the farmer went with us, he carried one of those long knife on the belt. Are we gonna meet a bear or something? We started hiking down the hill, from the main road to the farm, it was unpaved but there was somewhat a trail you can recognize, and to the waterfalls, there was nothing, the recognition of a trail is non-existent, no wonder he had to bring a knife. He did use it a few times to cut of bushes. It got really intense pretty quickly, we kept going down to the Valley, oh by the way, that was the same Valley that I was looking down at from paragliding yesterday, I saw them flying above us. We kept hiking down, the path was not flat, it was a slope, and slippery muddy slope. The margin of error got thinner and thinner, I had to grab whatever tree branches I could to make each steps. My shoes were muddy, dirt got on my pants and my white shirt, I did not care, I just want to be alive at this point. I thought this is supposed to be romantic and today is supposed to be my light activity day, what the hell have I gotten myself into…. again.

 

Waterfall Video

 

We got to the first waterfall, which was very pretty, I was still in one piece, I was excited and taking lots of pictures and stuff. We should have gone back at the time. But I guess we were at a crossroad, either keep going to the next waterfalls and head back up to the other side, or we go back to the farm direction in the same amount of time… so they chose keep going, I was getting more and more exhausted, falling behind, it was hard to keep up with them. I had to take break. I could barely make another step since we kept going uphill at one’s point. There were mud, ants on the ground, I did not care, I just needed to sit down. We did manage to get to the second waterfall (or I did, they did not have any problem hiking at all), I was already 85% done, I did not even have energy to take pictures at the 2nd waterfall. I was in my survival mode and just get back to the main road. There must be another 30 mins of hiking uphill back to the main road, taking 30 mins because I was total out of source. This is one of the hardest hike I have ever done. My calves were burning, when they dropped me at the Airbnb, I just collapsed on the couch for a good hour. 

 

I ventured out to find something to eat at 3pm, and I only had some bread, egg and cheese in the morning, and some fruits at the coffee farm. But my body was not really responding to foods very well this afternoon, I could only finish half my plate (very tasty crepes and fries), I felt bad, and they even asked if I want to wrap it up, I said sure. That was a very relaxing joint, I really would have loved to hang out there longer. But my stomach did not feel good, so I went back to the Airbnb. I had diarrhea that morning, and had a few more that afternoon and evening. The heart burn feeling was not under control even after I took at least 5 tums within 6-7 hours, so I pretty much just slept in for the rest of the day. 

 

 

Today is not what I was planned for, but it was a cool experience for the coffee farm and the hiking in the jungle, coming back alive. I mean I could cut half of those hiking that would have been prefect. I just hope this diarrhea thing does not turn into something bad. We shall see. 

All other photos from Day 8 are here.