We peeled ourselves away from San Gil, westbound for Medellin, of Pablo Escobar legend. Once again our map was deceiving, and the two inches between San Gil and Medellin represented two days of riding. Luckily it was two beautiful days of riding, and it was punctuated by a night here:
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| Party time! |
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| Room with hot tub, stocked fridge, king size bed and locked garage for $22 a night |
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| These hotels are intended for...parties? If you don't know I won't say. |
So, in apology, these roadside hotels are pretty common, always have secure bike parking, and are usually pretty cheap. We were the only guests in the ten room hotel, and we slept like rocks in the A/C after a long day on the Colombian highway. We woke up the next day, and rode through this to Medellin:
Most of the day was spent weaving through pastures of the greeniest-green that I've ever seen; it was like riding through the Lorax's neighborhood before the Once-ler came onto the scene. But eventually we came back to reality, and found ourselves in the mid-day traffic of Medellin.
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| Once-lers by the busload |
After inadvertently touring most of the city, we finally found our way to the hostel where our friends Anna and Kim were staying. They thought we were high in the mountains of El Cucoy with Charlie and Andy, so you can imagine the look on their faces when we showed up!
They were "keen" to take a gondola ride to the top of the city, and we were "keen" to go along. Check it out:
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| Anna and Kim + assorted ponytailed and un-ponytailed foreign men. |
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| You should have been there! |
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| Foggy camera blues... |
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| Crazy reflections in the gondola station. An important difference between a camera and an eye is the ability of the eye to percieve depth and differentiate between fields. Cameras make one flat jumble that your eye can't sort back out... |
It was an incredible view, and my camera did it's best, but after 10,000 plus photos, 20 plus drops, a few moist incidents...well, like it or not, it was time for it to retire. We headed to the mall, shopped around a bunch, and dropped a bunch of money we don't have on a new Sony Cybershot. It's almost the same as the old one, but it can do this!
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| A trippy, panoramic teaser from a future post! In the framework of this narrative this hasn't happened yet! |
So, unwanted cash disposed of, friends dispached to Bogota, we had little left to do but continue south ourselves. We could never have know what sort of animal husbandry and Dr.Suess references awaited us at our next destination, Salento, Colombia...
"Party" hotels. Living the high (altitude) life in Medellin. This trip is a little different than the rugged camping that you guys told us you'd be doing. :)
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