Medellín

On our last day in Medellín, Noelle and Ricky planned to meet at our hotel in the morning. We decided on an itinerary and we headed out. We were excited to explore the city and continue to share and Airdrop photos to each other’s iPhones!

We took the metro at Industriales where we efficiently bought our passes and quickly caught the train. We took it a few stops to Parque Berrío where we exited through a shopping arcade and wound up at our destination, Plaza Botero.

Here there are famous sculptures of large people and as Ricky noted, “Americans”. We had a lot of fun taking silly pictures and noted the police presence as this is a touristy area. There are sculptures apparently all over the city and if we had more time, would have probably explored some more.

We returned to the metro and took it north where we got off at Acevedo and transferred to the gondola - Medellín is at the bottom of a steep valley. The gondola stops several times, but the top stop is Santa Domingo. On our ride up, a cute girl continued to wave to us after they disembarked and she and her mom almost missed their elevator. Here are some photos of our ride up:

There is street art all over the city and even on the roofs of the many homes. Here are some fun examples:

We walked around only a little and decided to head back down. On our ride down, a cute but shy girl in pink glasses showed us that she could count in English but clammed up very quickly. Here are some photos of our ride down:

Here’s a video playlist of our gondola experience taken by Amanda! You can enjoy the music of our fellow riders and hear our silly conversation!

We then took the metro to Poblado where we walked to a restaurant known for their Ajiaco and Mondogo soups which are traditional Colombian dishes. The restaurant was also called “Ajiacos y Mondongos”.

After the lemonade and hearty soups, we walked a few blocks for ice cream. Here’s a photo of me and Noelle with our ice cream cones:

We had a rousing conversation as the awesome foursome had enjoyed each other’s company for the past few days. Noelle then came back with us to our hotel where we got ready to check out and Noelle who had stowed her luggage in our room headed to her next hotel.

I had again booked a car service with SunTransfers which was a bit early for our pickup to the airport. We hit no traffic and arrived before we could even check in. We enjoyed some Juan Valdez coffee and then waited for our flight on VivaColombia, a low cost airline. Amanda and I were headed north to Santa Marta so we could visit Tayrona National Park.

Our flight was supposed to be an hour, but was a bit longer as we couldn’t land due to weather and had to circle. When we did land, we were disappointed to learn that our SunTransfers pickup managed to forget us. So we got a taxi to Santa Marta city from an elderly man named Jairo who kept pointing things out to us like cactus - we finally arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn which was a friendly and very new hotel.

However, this was not our only disappointment as we all had received what we believed to be drunken texts from Ricky. Ultimately, we learned that Airdrop was probably a euphemism, but alas, there will be no more Airdrops. It is what it is...