Medellin Colombia

Ah Colombia again!!!! Our journey here was most uneventful, even a bit enjoyable as we broke it up in Miami in a very nice hotel that we liked a lot. We arrived the next afternoon, changed money and caught a collectivo right to the hotel that we had reserved a month previously.

Always when we arrive at a new city, even if we have been there before we are a bit nervous because it is so busy and traffic going every which way and so different than our home in Warner so mostly that night we just got settled and organized into our hotel and watched what was happening from the window of our hotel. Such a busy city it is and we are situated right smack dab in the middle of it. Actually this part of the city is a bit dodgy, especially after it gets dark but we don`t stay out much after dark.

At dusk, the fruit sellers come out and sell their delicious looking fruit to the many thousands of people who are out and about as in the picture below.

One of our day activities was to ride the metro to a gondola that is part of the metro. Medellin is in a valley and up and down the valley there is a regular metro but at one end of it is a gondola that goes way up the mountainside to communities that are built on the side of the mountain. The cement structure in this next picture is the tracks of the regular metro. (The metro here is all above ground and very new, very effecient, and very crowded.) But it doesn`t have escalators, just tons of stairs and our knees do not like stairs so much.

This picture below is of the gondola that services the communites high on the mountain. There are 3 stops along the way where people from different communities get off or on. Most effecient. They are building another such gondola on a different part of the metro but it will not be open for 2 months more or less.And a view of the valley sides of Medellin from on top. What a boon this must be for the families that live on the side of the mountain. The trip on the gondola takes 20+ minutes and we had great visits on the way up and back and learned some of the communities we were travelling over.

This morning we again got on the metro and travelled to the Botanical gardens. They are very beautiful and peaceful in the midst of the chaos of busy Medellin.

We thought these red bananas made a really pretty picture. Don`t know what they taste like though.

And in this part of the world they have the most beautiful wild orchids of which this picture shows a couple of species.

We had some thoughts about staying here another night or so but there is a big convention coming to town and and there will be no rooms at the inn so we are off tomorrow, not far, a couple of hours south to a small city called Guatapè. We spent a few hours there last year and liked it a lot so will spend a few days there this time.