18 Feb 2007
After a long and boring bus ride to get to Medellin we are frustrated straight away with an idiot taxi driver who doesnt know his way, and drives around in circles. Luckily things get better, though there are a few highs and lows over the next couple of days.
Our hostel of choice for a change si a real hostel, instead of the usual dodgy local hotel. We decide to go for this beacuase it is called the Black Sheep, has the exact same logo as the 2 hostels of the same name in NZ, and is run by a kiwi. I assume it will be somebody from Queenstown, possibly the previous owner of the Black Sheep hostel there who sold a couple of years ago.
But wouldnt you know it, Kelvin the owner just liked the name Black Sheep, did an internet seacrh and stole their logo! Classic! He jokes that if they want to sue him they´d better be patient!
His story is quite interesteing to us, who are still keeping an eye out for a new home in paradise (wherever that might be).. He was travelling thru, walked past an open home ona saturday morning and just like that was in business. Admittedly the house couldnt be much more suited to becoming a hostel. Its perfect.. big, loads of rooms and bathrooms etc. Admittedly it is not the cleanest place we have stayed. A few more little touches would make it so much better...
Medellin itself has around 2 million people. We are staying in quite obviously the wealty part of town. The streets are wide with trees planted, the houses are huge, and it is very clean.
Catching the flash metro train later in the day we realise that the same ticket can take us up into the hills, on the newly installed gondola. Its quite cool using a skifield gondola for public transport, and certainly cheaper than all the tourist orientated gondolas seen around the world. Once we ascend steeply we start to realise why it is not billed as a tourist attraction in its own right.
We are lookiing down on South Central L.A, or some other rough arsed latino area as fabled by Hollywood. It seems so out of character to be in a brand new gondola looking down on it all. At the top we realise that most travellers just stay in and head back down to afluency. But we want to get to where we think we will get a better vantage point over the center.
As we walk around the steep hillside we get a lot of strange looks from the locals. Many are quite aggressive. For literally the first time in over five months I feel slightly at risk, as we are sized up by a large group of loitering 20 something blokes. There are loads of people, mostly teeneagers just loitering, looking like they are waiting for an excuse to start a fight. It is a far far cry from the other side of town where we are living.
Nothing untoward happens to us, and I spend a lot of time later considering why I felt a bit edgy. Without a doubt we have walked thru poorer neighbourhoods in parts of Bolivia and Peru. But there the locals looked at us wearily, not aggresssively. They were considerably smaller than me, and i just couldnt be threated by their traditional costume. I cant help but wonder if my concern today was thru that Holywood familiarity of the faces and costume we saw, and the association of violence that such movies portray. Hmmm...
Back in town we visit the local museum to see more Botero fat people art. Out fron there are fatty bronze statues everywhere. they obviously love him here! We eventualy have to leave the museum in a hurry after get caught taking a photo of an incredible painting that looks exactly like a photograph. The security girl gets really upset and storms off to ¨tell the curator¨ .... doh!
But too much of our time in Medellin is spent trying to organise our onwards travel from Colombia up to Central America. The guide book has set us up with the idea of visiting San Andreas Island, then moving on to Central from there. We spend ages on the net and visiting travel agents. It appears that flying on to Central is no longer the best option, cos West Carribean Airlines shut recently... after crashing 2 of their planes and killling everybody. But the option of a cheap package holiday starts sounding appealing. One of the bonuses is that we can fly from Medellin to the island, then return to Cartagena, avoiding a 13 hour bus ride between the two. The package holidays include everything including unlimited alcahol and cigarrettes. We dont smoke, and are drinking little these days, but its amusing all the same.
In the end it all falls thru at hte final hour. The agent has us booked for the next morning, and we return to the hostel to collect travellers cheques to pay. We have to rush cos the agency is about to close. In a fluster we enter, only to find the dozy cow hadnt properly booked us, and the next departure is in 4 days..... too late for us.
The next day we do the 13 hour bus ride. The scenery is beautiful.. very like NZ rural, but it is long and boring. And we cant help butthink ¨shouldnt we be on a beach sipping (free) cocktails right now...¨
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment