After our wonderful time with the Buitrago family stopping in Salento for more than a few hours didn't seem worth it so we pressed on to our next stop Hacienda Venecia near Manizales. A popular coffee farm and hostel where we could sleep in the car and use the pool. We arrived that evening just in time for dinner and booked their coffee tour for the next morning. The coffee tour was ok not quite as good as tripadvisor reviews had made it out to be. We didn't even get to try any coffee but we did get to see the growing and harvesting process again in a more commercial setting. We also learnt that coffee plants have a twenty year life span and are cut right back to the roots every five years. The only coffee we had there was when we joined a couple the night before to the tour room where they wiped us up a milky expresso free of charge. We were almost beginning to like coffee but still needed sugar and ideally milk to make it drinkable.
After the tour we pushed on to Medellin though the drive took longer than expected after we were stopped for two hours by a road block protest. The long line of vehicles was being patrolled by soldiers keeping the peace and street vendors as always. Finally in Medellin we were pleasantly surprised to find a truly beautiful modern city, with its towering orange brick clad apartment blocks adding to the look. Over budget we stayed in another parqueo which turned out to be nicer than many hostels, it had covered secure parking, little noise and a shower in the bathroom, jackpot! Over night we read about a highly recommended 'free' walking tour of the city so in the morning we drove to the Black Sheep hostel (owned by an ex New Zealander) who the tour was run through. We booked the afternoon group and the owner agreed to let us camp in the driveway for the amazing price of 10,000COP or $7NZ. So we spent the morning in one of the huge five story malls that had a massive flower display for the up and coming flower festival we would be missing. We walked around feeling poor but eventually found Will some reasonably priced sunglasses after his last ones broke.
In the afternoon we caught the nice metro to the meeting point for the walking tour. Our guide Pablo arrived a little late and seemingly exhausted having come straight from the morning tour that ran overtime. Though after a drink and a sit down he was back into it and we begun the excellent but not really free tour that lasted four hours. The tour took us through some of the back streets in order to experience the 'real' city Pablo explained. We also learnt about the cities violent history which meant that less than ten years ago even locals were scared to walk through many of the places we were taken. One question came up about why the police appear so young around Medellin. Our guide explained that during the notorious reign of the drug lord Pablo Escobar (not to be confused with our guide) he put a bounty on the police paying $1000USD cash to anyone who shot and killed a police officer and brought him his badge… incredibly over 600 police officers were subsequently executed this way. Pablo also explained the mentality of the local Paisa people who believe that they are perhaps a little better than other Colombians and in our experience we have to agree overall the cities of the Paisa people were nicer, safer and felt less confrontational then the rest of Colombia we visited both before and after.
We were sad to leave Medellin and felt that we hadn't been in such a pleasant city since Santiago, Chile but time was of the essence. Our last Colombian stop before making the drive to the port of Cartagena was in the town of Guatape. Said to overlook a beautiful hydro lake with cutely decorated old buildings we were shocked to see that the hydro lake level was much much lower than normal. This turned the lake front into a swamp front and must have been costing local tourist companies a bomb in lost business. According to one local there was nothing they could do about it as the hydroelectric company owned the lake so could do what they liked with the water level. It certainly made us grateful for the Resource Management Act we have back in New Zealand. After a beer and fries we drove to La Piedra Del Peñol which is a enormous lone rock with a 725 step staircase built into a crack on the side. At the top we had fantastic views of the many winding arms of the hydro lake that maintained its beauty at this distance. We mucked around at the top for a while killing time as we planned to camp in the car park that night. From the top we spotted a Swiss plated van and headed back down to meet them. Michael, Martina and dog Killa (said Ki-ya) had been traveling and surfing their way around South America for nine months and like us planned to ship from Cartagena to Panama in the next week or two. We spent the night together under the shelter of their awning as lighting cracked around us and rain poured down. We discussed the possibility of sharing a container together for the shipping but in reality we wanted to ship a week earlier than they did. The next day we meet up again on the road and decided to travel together for the three day drive to Cartagena.
We didn't travel very far that day due to hours spent in road blocks and resulting heavy traffic so just as it got dark we pulled into a gas station for the night. Together we had dinner at the restaurant next door and Will and I remembered it was our four year anniversary, haha what a place to spend it! After a hot, sweaty sleep we showered in the gas station 'ducha' and returned to the road with the aircon pumping. Before long we arrived in the town of Taraza so we stopped for some food supplies, while outside a man told us that we better keep going while we can as another protest/road block was about to start. We did just in time as the other direction was already closed and we passed hundreds of fallen trees that had obviously blocked the road in previous protests.
Later that afternoon we stopped to stretch our legs and agreed to camp on the beach near Tolú rather then pushing on to the chaos of Cartagena in the dark. Just outside of Tolú we found a good spot for 5,000COP each, this included a shower, toilet and car camping in a grass lot just off the beach. We all immediately went for a swim in the ridiculously warm ocean, that offered only mild relief from the sweltering heat. It was our first swim in the sea since we began the trip and our first ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean! We lazed away the afternoon then prepared some food to cook over a beach bonfire. With the good company and a few beers we had a magic evening. However once we got into bed the heat inside the car was unbearable even with the windows open. The back windows have mosquito nets taped over them so when they are down we can sleep mosquito free. But for further respite from the heat we decided to oped the rear door as well which made things a lot cooler but brought with it an onslaught of mosquitos despite the repellant we had both put on. Then the music next door started and continued until 5am so we didn't really get any sleep at all that night and we knew we needed to do something soon otherwise sleeping in Cartagena would be difficult to say the least.
Later that afternoon we stopped to stretch our legs and agreed to camp on the beach near Tolú rather then pushing on to the chaos of Cartagena in the dark. Just outside of Tolú we found a good spot for 5,000COP each, this included a shower, toilet and car camping in a grass lot just off the beach. We all immediately went for a swim in the ridiculously warm ocean, that offered only mild relief from the sweltering heat. It was our first swim in the sea since we began the trip and our first ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean! We lazed away the afternoon then prepared some food to cook over a beach bonfire. With the good company and a few beers we had a magic evening. However once we got into bed the heat inside the car was unbearable even with the windows open. The back windows have mosquito nets taped over them so when they are down we can sleep mosquito free. But for further respite from the heat we decided to oped the rear door as well which made things a lot cooler but brought with it an onslaught of mosquitos despite the repellant we had both put on. Then the music next door started and continued until 5am so we didn't really get any sleep at all that night and we knew we needed to do something soon otherwise sleeping in Cartagena would be difficult to say the least.