Colombia
August
31, 2012 - From El Cocuy, we headed back towards Tunja and
ended up in the same hotel we stayed at earlier. The next day, we went
to a place called Guatavita.
Guatavita is a small place close to Bogotá. Despite it being a
tourist town for local Colombians, we saw relatively few hotels
and ended up in a fairly modest "hospedaje" for the night.
The tower in the background of the picture above is the centre of town. You can walk across town in half an hour. We had an incredibly good chicken meal, dining al fresco, and later wandered back into town. On the way, we came across a small window from which home made cake was sold by an English woman who had lived in the town on her own for the last eight years. She'd been in Colombia for over forty years and was still lamenting the loss of a lover thirty five years ago. A wonderful eccentric, she had a nice house with a rooms dedicated to singing, painting and playing guitar.
The next day we pushed on to Medellin, via Bogotá. On the way, we got lost a few times as the GPS tracks turned from solid road into goat tracks. Eventually we made it to Bogotá, being overtaken on the highway at one point by at least ten or so M- series BMWs with their engines wound out and screaming like tortured pigs, flying by at blistering speed.
In Medellin, we ended at Casa Kiwi, a hostel in the middle of upscale Medellin called Poblado. We're going to hang here for a while and relax. Our pace of travel had decreased drastically. In May, we filled up the bikes eighteen times, ten times in June, eight times in July and four times in August.
Medellin is an interesting place. There are no spectacular highlights, but rather a collection of smaller things to see.
This is the view from the top of the cable cart, part of the metro system, where a very modern library was built in a poorer neighborhood.
The downtown core can be seen in the distance.
A visit to Museo de Antioquia was probably the most interesting visit so far in Medellin, although it is filled with Fernando Botero's art, mainly portraying corpulent people.
The life and death of Pablo Escobar is widely "celebrated" in Medellin as well, with tours dedicated to his influence in the city.
Medellin has a fair bit of public art as well.
Despite the statues and paintings, real life on the streets of Medellin is far more enjoyable. The city is filled with well proportioned females, a large percentage of them admittedly aided by modern medicine, although no field test were conducted.
The museum of modern art is something to give a miss when in Medellin.
In the time that we arrived, a few more bikers have flocked in. The count now stands at five, with an Englishman, American and Australian on motorcycle adventures of some kind or other residing at Casa Kiwi. Medellin is the city of "eternal spring", with year round temperatures hovering between 22 and 28 degrees centigrade and no humidity to speak of. It's comfortable here but at some point we will have to move on.
I've also started pursuing photography a bit more aggressively and am applying to a few stock photo agencies.