I get up at eight, feeling quite refreshed. I had a good night´s sleep by the open window without feeling cold for one second. I guess I could warm to the idea of living in Cali for a longer time... A hot shower in the huge, nice bathroom, packing and breakfast. There´s already a Canadian biologist who teaches in Trinidad, one of his students (?) and a lady from Kenya. I blend in well. The biologist is happy to learn that I´m from Germany and starts practising his German, well, Swabian (a dialect he learnt as an exchange student at Lake Constance). Breakfast is very good - omelette and fresh fruit. After breakfast I have Eva call a cab to the bus station where I catch a shuttle bus to the airport and off I am - adiós Cali. One last drive through the endless sugarcane fields and before I know it my bag - which awkwardly seems to get heavier the longer I travel without having bought much yet - is on its way to the plane (at least that´s what I hope).
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| sugarcane |
The way to the regional flights section is "a bit" confusing and takes a lot of asking before I get to the right place. But I find it and I needn´t have hurried - boarding starts more than 30 minutes late for reasons unknown to us passengers. But finally we can walk to the little Fokker 50.
The woman sitting next to me sees I´m German when she has a look at my ipad - I´m reading my local newspaper. She is Colombian, but has been living in Stuttgart for a long time. Carmen, that´s her name, is married to a German lawyer who doubles as honorary consul for Colombia in Southern Germany. We talk a lot and time flies (pun intended, of course :-) ).
After landing I wait for my bag, which arrives only minutes later. I say good-bye to Carmen, call my friend Amparo whom I had planned to meet but that might get difficult as she has to go to a family reunion over the long weekend. We´ll see what happens. I take the shuttle bus to downtown Medellín, which is ca. 40 km from Ríonegro airport. The trip takes as long as the flight, mainly because of the usual major hold-ups in central Medellín. For the last kilometers to the hotel I take a cab and get there in no time. The hotel 5a Avenida (5th Avenue) looks quite alright and the room is okay. Not as nice as last year´s, but that was another category.
I move in and then take my laptop and go outside to write my blog on the balcony. But what´s this noise all of a sudden. A bus just parked at the curbside and spits out a cheering, singing, shouting and dancing crowd of about 40 teenagers and 2 accompanying adults. And they walk straight into the lobby. That can´t be. This is not a cheapo, not a youth hostel, but a decent 3-star hotel at € 40 per night. But it is true. They take over in no time - all the remaining rooms are theirs. Within 15 minutes the buildings is shaking in its foundations. Horrible Reggaeton music blasts and blares out of EVERY room but mine, obviously. I try to hide but when several boys try to kidnap the chairs and the table in my part of the shared balcony I furiously open the door and tell them off. Now, that´s settled then... I go down to reception and want to know how many nights the teenagers are going to stay. I´m not willing to pay this amount of money for a youth hostel / school field trip accommodation. Typically German or typical teacher, I know, but I´m on holiday and don´t want to become substitute teacher for a bunch of incredibly noisy Colombian kids.
When I´ve had enough I take my things and store them in the room. I walk to a nearby supermarket and treat myself to what could easily be Colombia´s finest Italian-style pizza in a restaurant I know from last year´s visit. The pizza still is every bit as good as I remembered it to be.
I don´t really feel like going back to the hotel but it starts to tip with rain and so I surrender. I can already hear the music from the corner. Still, I get my laptop and a beer and go back to my open-air office on the balcony. Around 11 pm it´s getting a lot less noisy. Or have I gone deaf? No, the lights have gone out, too. I keep writing until after midnight but then go to bed and fall asleep. No noise!
No noise all night. It´s 8:30 am when the Reggaeton is back in the house (not to be mistaken with Reggae!). I hurry down to the breakfast hall - I really don´t want to have breakfast with them! It´s the usual fare: scrambled eggs and arepa, the taste-free corn patty Colombians can´t live without. Without any hurry I make myself ready for leaving, leave some dirty clothes for washing at the reception and have Norman, the reception boy, call a cab. I want to go to El Retiro, a little town about 30 kilometers from Medellin that is said to be a nice place. I don´t feel like braving the city crowds and the traffic anyway plus I have to make use of the fact that there is no strike yet (and strikes here are often associated with road blocks). They are to start tomorrow...
It takes about 1 1/2 hours from Medellín´s Terminal Sur to the town, mostly because the bus has to leave the steep valley Medellín is in, about 800m height difference.The clouds are hanging low in the sky and it´s cool when I arrive in El Retiro, which is at approx. 2150 m.a.s.l., but very soon the sun comes out. El Retiro is indeed a nice little town. Not as picture-perfect pretty as others I have seen, but still pretty and very authentic. A typical paisa town (for explanation check blog of 2011 ;-) ) with beautiful and colourful architecture and typical small town life. There are no tourists, some visitors from Medellín okay, but certainly no other foreigner. I take a lot of pleasure from watching Sunday life in the streets of El Retiro, my Nikon with the new zoom lense on always at hand.
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| She absolutely wanted to pose in front of the camera. And her husband supports her model aspirations by buying her elegant clothes. |
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| Woodcarving above door |
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| August is the months of the kites all over Colombia |
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| Did her husband also provide the elegant clothes for a future model career? |
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| Have they run out of building material for the pillars? |
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| Don´t drink and ride - Aguardiente in the saddle |
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| Concert on the plaza |
When I arrive it´s raining. What a surprise. The bus leaves me next to a metro station, which is very convenient for me. I take the metro and on the way home stop at the supermarket. The rain has stopped and the sun comes out briefly. Everything is quiet at the hotel. The teenagers - who seem to be some sort of sports team here for a competition - are not here and don´t come back before 10:30 pm. Balcony time (=blog writing)! But enough writing for one day!
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| Church next to my hotel |
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