Castillo San Felipe

Getsemani, La Trinidad y la iglesia de San Roque

Most things come with a fried banana, refried beans and coconut rice

The church of San Roque

San Roque

y su perro (pero con rabo :)) )

Palacio de la Inquisicion

Cartagena snapshots

Parque Arvi

We took the second cable car to the end of the line, right in the thick of the national park over 2000 meters high. The plan was to get a map from the information hut and head off for a 2-3 hour hike. The first thing we came to was a farmers' market and we did a quick spin. I bought some ham and cheese "tortas" (baps) and a piece of carrot cake for our lunch on the hike. It felt good to have my hiking boots on and to breath the cool, crisp air. I have missed hiking so much. We found an information counter and I asked the guy if he could recommend a good trail for about 3 hours. He told me right out that it didn't work like that. Eh?! So how does hiking work exactly?? Well, in Parque Arvi, you take a free guide for each of the walks highlighted on the map. Everyone gathers at the head of the trail and then hike together when there is a group. Each walk takes about 30 minutes. We have hired guides in the past if the the hike is particularly long or tricky like in Indonesia (Rinjani), Indonesia (Arun), Peru (Inka Trail) and Malaysia (Kinabalu). As far as we knew, the trails were very easy in Parque Arvi, so why the need for a guide? I thanked the guy, took the map and then went back to where David was waiting. We decided to just do our own thing and use the map as a guide. We decided to head towards a lagoon around 3km away and then double back and take another trail for another 4-5km. The map was rubbish. It was designed for people walking with a guide. We kept missing turns as they weren't actually marked on the map. We asked directions at one stage and a family told us that we had to take a guide as it's easy to get lost with all the trees. We thanked them and carried on doing our own thing. The trails were very good, but the signposting and maps were awful so we did take a few wrong turns. One of the wrong turns resulted in a spotting of a family of emerald toucans. Wonderful! These are the park's emblem, but I think they are actually quite hard to find so we felt so lucky. Once we sussed the right trail, we had a wonderful hike. At the end, we sat on the grass eating our lunch. We also found a little hut selling organic coffee and another selling artesanal (i.e. made in someone's kitchen) chocolates. Back at the market, we bought some berries from a farmer. It's the first time we had tried uchuvas (gold-berries). Yum yum!

After a break, we took the cable car back to Santo Domingo and lingered a while. It's a bustling neighbourhood. Apparently, 10 years ago it was one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the world, but not any more. As it was a Sunday, kids played in the park, dogs wandered around and mums and dads sat on benches chatting. The views were fabulous too.

Map of the national park (they didn't give this one out!)

Me on the trail

Strawberries, blackberries and goldberries

Views of the city from the cable car

What a great day.

Metro cable to Parque Arvi

This was the best day of our trip so far. Wow. 

We worked out that we could get to a national park with hiking trails by public transport and we set off after breakfast. First we took a taxi to a metro station, then took one line to Acevedo and then changed onto another line going to Santo Domingo. From Santa Domingo we knew we could take a cable car to the national park. What was amazing about this trip that the metro line that went from Acevedo to Santo Domingo was also a cable car and was part of the metro! I don't know of any other city in the world that has a cable car as part of the city's cheap public transport. 

The metro cable is about 10 years old and must have transformed the city. Many of the residential working class neighbourhoods like Santo Domingo are located high up in the mountains surrounding Medellin. Medellin centre is located in the basin made from the surrounding mountains and you can see houses on the the slopes in all directions. It's a pretty stunning city visually. Some areas of the city are almost 2000 metres above sea level. We had a good look at them through the window of the cable car.The air is cool up there, chickens, dogs and children seem to run around freely. Church services are held in structures that have no walls and a bit of tarp for a room, laundry dries in a zigzag of lines across flat roof terraces.

A taxi driver the night before had warned us that it wasn't safe to take the metro cable and we didn't understand why, so we asked him. He said that "comunes" get into the cars and cause trouble. Comunes? Delinquents. Kids from the poor neighbourhoods targeting rich out of towners getting the metro to the national park Fortunately, no "comunes" got on our cable car. A woman with her young son, and a family from out of town. We all chatted amiably. We learned that there were lines of over an hour during rush hour to catch a cable car. About 6 people can fit in one, so it would take a while for a queue to go down.

Santo Domingo was the end of the line - a barrio high up the mountain overlooking the city. We transferred to another cable car that would take us to the national park.

Jardin Botanico

To take a break from the craziness that was El Centro, we jumped back on the Metro and got off at Universidad. It's a quiet, spacious neighbourhood housing several museums, the university and the botanical gardens. We often seek out botanical gardens on our travels. Actually, our first date was a rainy walk in the botanical gardens in Sydney over 21 years ago. We have since been to botanical gardens in Argentina, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Singapore. We spent a couple of hours in the peaceful gardens here in Medellin along with the cats, giant lizards and snogging couples.

We learned a new word in the cafe there: "chorro". We guessed (incorrectly) from context that a "chorro" of milk meant a drop, but it actually means a "ton". Lukewarm milk with a hint of coffee was pretty hard to stomach. We were confusing it with una "gota" de leche. Won't make that mistake again.

For lunch we tried a menu ejecutiva which is a set lunch and very cheap. Everything seems to come with some version of fried bananas, rice, avocados, corn, arepas (fried cornbread with cheese) and refried beans. Lovely, but I might get sick of it quite quickly.