Medellin

After Taganga, we traveled on a bus for 16 hours to get to Medellin, the former stomping grounds of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Arriving into the city, we were really impressed with the city of 3.5 million residents lying on the valley floor and slowly creeping up the edges of the mountains. After finding a hostal to drop off our things for a few nights we walked around the central part of the city, admiring the old churches and buildings intermixed with the modern skyscrapers. Medellin is a very modern city. They have invested heavily into improving the city since the Escobar days, and it shows. They have built the only public transportation rail line, Metro, in Colombia and it is cheap and efficient. We loved it. Since building the rail line they have added two cable lines with gondolas to go up the sides of the valley to serve the poorer areas as well. One ticket of about 75 cents gets you anywhere you want to go within the system. They also have buses that serve the outlying areas to connect them to the metro stations. It is really quite awesome.
Over the next few days we walked a lot and rode the metro a lot to see Medellin. Our hostal was a few blocks away from the villa Olimpica. That place was huge. Besides the soccer stadium serving one of the pro teams, they have tracks, volleyball and basketball stadiums, six pools, chess, ping pong, skate park, and on and on. In other areas of Medellin we visited the free botanical garden, various parks and squares including one that is full of towers of lights and looks pretty awesome lit up at night as well as a park where you are encouraged to kick off your shoes and relax. We also decided to go paragliding while in Medellin. Shannon was terrified at first but Kevin really wanted to go, plus it is cheap in Colombia about half of what it costs in the United States or less. We took a bus high onto the valley wall that had great views of the city and there we strapped on our harnesses and hooked up with our pilots and parachutes and ran off into the wind to glide back down into the valley in silence. It was amazing and we both loved it. Shannon even said she would do it again.
We made a couple of day trips outside of Medellin as well. One day we went to a town called Santa Fe de Antioquia which is a small colonial town that is known for its tamarind candy among other things. We strolled around the city admiring its colonial look and many churches (of course). We headed toward a bridge outside of town that was one of the first suspension bridges built in South America and walked and walked to only realize we ended up going the wrong direction. (We blame Lonely Plant). So we didn't want to walk back and ended up on a bus back to Medellin. We also went to the town of El Penol which has a 200 meter high granite monolith near the edge of a lake. They have built a 649 step staircase into a fissure that allows visitors to climb to the top for some amazing views. From there we went to another town close by called Guatape which is known for its fresco-like adornments of the traditional houses that have brightly painted bas-relief depictions of people, animals and shapes that cover the bottoms of the houses. They were very interesting and fun to look at. The town has also become a weekend getaway for the residents of Medellin and is almost like a festival atmosphere on weekends with plenty of alcohol flowing. Colombians seem to really like their alcohol and beer is sold everywhere. While in Guatape, we took advantage of their 600 meter long zip line that goes over the lake. It was fun.
We really loved Medellin but had to keep moving on to see other sights. Next up: Salento and Bogota.