Colombia

To be completely transparent, we didn’t have Colombia on our original trip itinerary but after a lot of ticket research, it turned out that Bogota was about 3 times cheaper to fly out of to get to Europe compared to all other South American cities. So, we decided to use it as our bridge to Europe, and we are very glad we did! It was a quick 6 day trip to Medellin and Bogota but it turned out to be one of our favorite countries in South America.

We flew from Santiago to Medellin and arrived at night so we didn’t immediately appreciate how beautiful the city was. But, we woke up and had a look from our rooftop and were happy to see a lush, green, bustling city and a lot of exotic birds even from our Airbnb roof right in the middle of the city! We were a block away from a really neat church called Parroquia San Joaquin. We made a sightseeing trek from our neighborhood of Laureles to Botero Plaza through some completely overwhelming and seemingly endless street markets. We are big Fernando Botero fans, especially his sculptures. There were so many huge bronze disproportionate sculptures in the plaza and an impressive amount of people in the square as well. The horse sculpture in the square was a throwback to the Botero horse that we visited in Baltimore in 2018.

The climate in Medellin in April reminded us a lot of spring in Hawaii and we realized that we have lost all of our heat and humidity chops. Medellin is known as “City of Eternal Spring” but it was nothing short of fucking hot. On our long walk home, we strolled through Cerro de Nutibara Sculpture Park and we happened on a sculpture that we knew from Las Vegas- what an odd juxtaposition! It was by Ugo Rondinone, who made 7 Magic Mountains which we had visited in 2020 on our Great Trans-American Covid Roadtrip.

We visited the Modern Art Museum of Medellin for some nice culture and artwork and went on long walks through the El Poblado neighborhood, which is the nicest in the city. We had a noteable dinner at Casa El Ramal, which was a super moody candlelit affair where Em had the #2 burger of her life (shouts to Farmer’s Daughter in Capon Bridge, West Virginia for #1).

We also visited the Medellin Botanical Gardens which were HUGE and impressive and free! We wanted to do some birdwatching and were happy to see some exotic, strange birds here.

We flew from Medellin to Bogota where we spent only 2 days but we were pleasantly surprised by this capital city! Our only real plan here was to visit the Botero Museum which did not disappoint with a huge collection of his paintings and sculptures. It was coincidentally a Sunday in Bogota when we went to the museum and we walked nearly the entire 2 miles home along a massive street market. We also hiked up Monserrat Mountain which had impressive views of the city. It was only about 2 miles up but it was steep and went up to about 10,500 feet so it was a good workout before our red-eye to Madrid.

Colombia was a pleasant surprise. Even with such a quick visit we experienced great coffee (even decaf for Ror’s delicate constitution), delicious food, exotic birds, accessible art, and friendly people. We made a plan to come back (in spite of the national drink of Aguardiente, which is damn near undrinkable) to give it the time it deserves.