Arrival in Medellin

So anyway ... my holiday in Bogota wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, mainly because despite having a few Internet contacts they all ended up blowing me out or not replying to my emails when I got out here, and thus ended up spending all my time alone, apart from the times when I was spending money like in the shops, the hairdressers, the restaurants or whatever.

But this was only the prelude to the REAL holiday in Colombia, the trip to Medellin to hang out with some of Paola's folks back where they all started and have their roots. This was the reason why I came out here in the first place, and without this I would have shelved Colombia way to the back of my list of places to visit, especially going solo.

It started off with a few names on a scrap of paper, with phone numbers and a vague promise of meeting up if I should make it all the way to Medellin. Well fly out to Colombia I had, and then onward to Medellin I did, so it was a very welcome sight to find a shop at the airport lounge that sold mobile recharger's or there is not telling what might have happened.

When I arrived at the airport to find no one with my name on a piece of paper and all the other passengers got picked up I made the call. I called my contact, who then said that they were at work until 6pm, but had arranged to send someone else out here to pick me up. Not a promising start.

An hour later, after making a few lengths of the entire arrivals hall, this car pulls up and seeing as I was the only left standing on the platform, and I am of course easily spotted as being Caucasian, they spotted me first and came up to grab my stuff.

Relief instantly flooded through me ,as along with my friends auntie who speaks limited English, there was also a guy that was doing the driving and he was really something else. He had a really calm attitude to him, he was friendly and approachable on a lot of subjects and having lived in London for 4 years and New York for 15 more, there was no problems with language other than he still had a slight Yanky twang as it were.

This guy, who had also done a fair amount of travelling, was gonna be a good pal while I was out here, and that was alright by me.

Driving through the countryside from Medellin airport to the city was really something else and if you have never seen a complete vista of a lush green mountain range in the full 360, speckled with small hamlets all around then you have not seen anything. This place was like the best parts of Spain, New Zealand and Dominican Republic all in one, and I could instantly see why Paola is proud of her heritage and city ... she has every reason to be.

This place had warmth, plenty of greenery in all shapes and sizes, olive skinned beauties everywhere I looked, and an air of post Mexican cowboy & western films of the John Wayne or Ronald Regan era, I mean it really had it all.

The drivers all seem to be Jedi masters, as they weave in and out of each other be it in a old beaten up Beetle or brand new BWM, and then of course you have to add the thrill of the motor cyclists and the horse carts as well. The law out here stated that every motorcyclist has to wear a big puffy safety jacket with their registration number on the back, and with the heat that's a receipt of bad BO and several showers a day.

All the buildings had their own character and each street was unlike any other, as one minute you could be driving down a fully tarmacked road with car showrooms off to one side and high skyline hotels the other, but 2 minutes later if you hang a right turn you are suddenly going down a wide dusty path with no pavement on either side and the rust and boned of broken down buildings almost encroach on your car as it drives by.

But no matter where you are, or what direction you look in, look, in the distance you will always see the pastel greens and browns of a distant mountain range reaching high up above where you were.