The hostel owner had, a young Colombian woman, was more than eager to watch a movie as well as it was something that she rarely got to do normally, but with the rain coming down in buckets it was not suitable to go out and so it was not really a waste of time at all. We decided to watch the Lord of the Rings film, startig with the first one and we never expected to get very far as my friend was due to arrive any moment, however it didn't quite end up the way we planned.
I ordered in a pizza and a bottle of coke, thinking that my friend would be here soon, but after about five hours she sent me an email saying that she had a family emergency at home and could not make it, so we finished the first movie and began to watch the second in the trilogy.
The weather outside had turned worse if anything, and it was so dark and thundering that it was almost adding its own sound affects to the movie, but luckily the hostel was fairly empty so there was not too many comings and going to interrupt the movie. As I am a keen Tolkien fan, and the owner had never read the books, she found a few things puzzling so I was happy to explain a few things to her and ended up almost talking over half of it interpretting the movie from the book and going into detail on things that the film just showed but often never bothered trying to explain.
As my friend was not coming over and the weather was just worsening by the minute, the hostel owner and I saw no reason to stop at the end of the second film and just continued to eat our way thorugh the pizza and chatting to the end of the third, by this time we were sitting next to each other on the sofa underneath a thick throw to keep out the chill and chatting like old friends.
By the time we had reached the end of the third it was time for bed, but she suggeted that I wake up early and go to the coffee plantation nearby in the morning.
When I woke up next morning it was already gone 9am and I had pretty much decided that as the weather had been so bad, in case of further rain during today, I would rather do the city centre while the dry weather held and possibly leave the coffee plantation til the following morning, or this afternoon depending on how I felt after the morning.
After checking my emails I arranged to go visit the city centre, and possibly because she had nothing better to do and partly because of the movie fest of last night, the hostel owner offered to come with me and for the day we were again more like friends that guest and hotelier.
We swung by the tourist informatoin office where she picked up for me enough maps, leaflets and brouchers for me to do a pretty detailed guide of the region then and there, did a tour of the city centre walking its entire length, and then stopping for a great meal that was very reasonably priced and only suffered from a slight poor service of the waiter who seemed to forget my drinks order.
After the tour, and taking plenty of photos, we popped across to where they locals were putting on a cross between a circus show and a pantomime, and in a rare change of pace they had actually started earlier than advertised in order to beat the worst of the bad weather, and thus we got there just a fraction after half way through. The costumes were simple and the routines simple at times, but I had to take my hat off to the acrobats who performed without nets of safety wires and would run up and down poles as part of the routine.
As we had arrived midway we only saw about half an hours worth, but I was glad to have come and impressed with the finale which was extremely simple but terrific to watch, in that the guy walked / climbed unaided to the top of a pole turned himself upside down and then hanging on by his entwined legs spread his arms out wide and then relaxed his leg muscles sending him plummeting down to earth, only to tighten them at the last spilt second, coming to a sudden stop less than a foot from the ground.
I had my heart in my mouth just watching it, and the fact that if he had mistimed it a fraction of a second too late he would have hit the ground headfirst, surely fracturing his spine and giving him instant brain damage if he had survived at all.
Once the show was over we got a taxi back, which was just a few blocks back and as the rain had started up again we just did a super fast tour of the nearby shopping mall, bought ourselves a couple of coffees and then walked the last two blocks back to the hostel.
During the day I had explained to her that I was hopefully going to write a travel book upon my return, and she said that one of the guys from Lonely Planet who had done the report of this part of Colombia had met her a few times and used her as a local expert of Medellin, frequently still emailing her from time to time to ask questions, to which she would always happily reply as she is eager to show the best of Colombia.
I was impressed with her background knowledge and eagerness to help, even going above and beyong anything I had experienced thus far on my trip, and by the end of my day with her I was having to bite my lip and remind myself that I don't have enough money to invest in her new venutre, a joint hostel and tour company, although if I do manage to make a success of my writing career I will not hesistate to come back and offer to become a backer and with her drive and experience I cannot see it being anything but a huge success.
Once we got back to the hostel we flicked on the news which was sadly full of news reports that were upsetting and distressing.
Apart from the stories of forest fires in California was the much much closer to home news on the damage caused by the flooding and mountain landslides, as so much rain had fallen the previous night two nights that entire sections of mountain had just slipped down and tragically there were a number of deaths and further loss of power and water to some homes. I also saw that in Poblado, the region of Medellin where I was staying the other day, had experienced an even worse tragedy as fifteen houses had been flattened like matchboxes under the weight of shifting earth from above, killing 2 instantly with another 10 being unaccounted for at the time of the news report.
As the rain had once again started to come down hard outside, I decided that I would not be going out trying to test out the local clubs and bars, so instead just typed up my notes of the day and retired early to bed.
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