The kids didn´t cause too much racket – until 7
am that is when somebody is yelling at me at the top of his voice. Wait!
There´s nobody else in this room… After a few minutes of continued yelling I
decide to find out what´s going on. The boys next door have put the TV on full
blast. After kindly asking them to put the ***** volume down it´s back to
peaceful, but I´m awake and I know I won´t go back to sleep. But I don´t want
to get out of bed either. So I get my kindle and read for another hour. Then a nice
shower and I´m ready for breakfast – omelette and bread.
I walk down to the metro station – I want to
visit my favourite place in Medellín, the botanical gardens. My friend Amparo
calls me on the train. We agree on place and hour for lunch today. This leaves
me with a good hour at the gardens – should be enough as I´ve already been
there twice. The botanical garden still is as nice as I remembered it to be.
While I´m at the lagoon I hear a loud splash – an iguana has just let itself
fall into the water to escape another iguana.
It´s twelve-ish when I return to the metro. I
reach the agreed station a bit early – being a good German – but Amparo and her
husband Mauricio arrive right on time – which is not a terribly Colombian thing
to do J. We
drive up the steep windy road to the airport – the one I took yesterday to get
to El Retiro, too. We drive almost all the way to El Retiro and stop at a
typical restaurant, right when the heavens open. We are escorted by a man with
a huge umbrella and find a nice table inside. Mauricio orders all sorts of
local delicacies: chicharrones (pork rind), chorizo (grilled sausage), arepa de
choclo (corn patty), empanadas (pasties) and so on. It´s delicious – and a lot!
There have been several torrential downpours by
the time we finish the feast and Amparo wants to know what I´d life for
dessert. Dessert?! I´m stuffed already, but they won´t take no for an answer.
They had planned to take me to a little town not far away, but because of the
rain the new plan now is to go to a nearby shopping centre and look for dessert
there. We get into the car and the sun is back. So Mauricio and Amparo decide
we should go back to plan A and head for the village of San Antonio Pereira,
just “around the corner”. Well, it´s a long corner. And en route we pass the
nice waterfall of Salto de Tequendamita for a photo stop.
San Antonio is
chock-a-block with people but Mauricio manages to find parking and then we walk
a few meters to the dessert place, Dulce de San Antonio. You can choose from a huge
number of desserts. After trying some I go for passion fruit mouse. Bliss!
After dessert we have a quick look around, food
stalls, handicraft vendors and artists everywhere – and heaps of people. We
really should go back to Medellín before the crowds have the same idea. The
traffic jam will be horrendous.
It´s not easy to find the way back to the
highway but we manage. Despite the early return to Medellín we can´t quite beat
the traffic. There are occasional (minor) hold-ups, but nothing compared to what
this road is going to look like in about 1 hour. Amparo and Mauricio take me to
my hotel. I show them my room and give them the little present I brought with
me from Germany. My bag is not going to get any lighter for this, though,
because they give me a packet of coffee from the son-in-law´s coffee farm. And
a little something for my mother. They are such sweet people! And what a
beautiful day this has been!
When they leave it´s time to settle the hotel
bill and get my stuff ready for tomorrow´s trip to Villavicencio via Bogotá.
And then I watch The Big Bang Theory in English. It is definitely much better
than the dubbed version we´ve got in Germany!
The kids leave the hotel around 10:30 pm in
their coach, too, so this promises to be a really quiet night.
It´s 6:15 am when the mobile phone wakes me –
well, the alarm does. I get ready, close the bag and leave the hotel roughly
half an hour later. A taxi takes me to where the minibuses to the airport leave
and I get on a bus at once. It´s not even eight o´clock when I reach the
airport near the town of Ríonegro. Baggage-dropping takes some time but
everything goes according to plan – until I reach the gate. The hour of
departure comes, but there is no plane. Instead a next-to-incomprehensible
announcement informs us that due to technical problems the flight will leave
(at least) 1 ½ hours later. Great! Just what I needed today – with quite some
more travelling ahead. In Bogotá I will take a cab to Fran´s and leave some
heavy stuff (like the coffee) there. Then I have to catch a bus to
Villavicencio, some three hours from Bogotá in the hot savannah to the south…
It´s going to be a long day…
The plane finally arrives and after some more waiting we are finally allowed to board.
As the flight is mercifully short, we don´t get there too much later. It´s about half past one when I arrive outside of Fran´s apartment building (well, it´s not really her building ;-)). I leave my things in the apartment and we have lunch in a nearby restaurant - I go for fish. Then a quick detour to the supermarket and we´re back in the apartment. I re-organize my stuff, packing a small bag for the next 3 days while leaving the rest with her. Makes travelling so much easier. I get to the bus station and buy a ticket for the next bus to Villavicencio - which is due to leave in 3 minutes. It´s closer to 10 minutes, but still not bad. But then we´re stuck in crazy Bogotá rush hour traffic. It takes close to 2 hours to reach the city limit and another 1 3/4 hours to cover the rest of the distance. When I reach Villavicencio the heavens open their gates but the taxi ride to the hotel is short and I´m shown to my room by the nice owner of the hotel. The room is simple but clean and comfortable. That´s all I need for one night. Tomorrow I´ll get on board a little plane and fly to the river of seven colours in a remote corner of the country. I´m thrilled!
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