Road Trip Colombia! Palms, Spiders, and Cartels Oh My!

In August 2017 Cris and I had a tour break and decided to take a trip around Colombia. For the first week we drove about 600 km from Bogota to Medellin stopping in Salento, Santa Rosa, and Manizales. The second week we were island hopping in the north and I will write a full post about the second week soon!

Our adventure began with renting a car in downtown Bogota, this in itself was a bit of an adventure. Why is it always a pain in the ass to get a rental car? Finally we got our chariot and we were off, as soon as we were comfortable pulling out into Colombian traffic. There are only a few places in the world that I truly believed that I might die in a rental car and Colombia is firmly on that list! Driving in the city is like playing chicken every 30 seconds, there are so many motorbikes that it feels like a swarm of mosquitoes constantly buzzing around you. 

From Bogota to Salento is about 300 km and we did not realize that those 300km would take us almost 8 hours. The roads, once we were out of the city, were 2 lane mountain roads that every big truck in Colombia must have to drive, it was hours of slow moving hill climbs. As I mentioned before the drivers in Colombia see road rules as mere suggestions so we had to be committed when we attempted to pass a slow moving vehicle. It was all worth it though, Salento is a small colonial town in the bottom corner of the Eje Cafetero (coffee triangle). It is also the entrance to the Cocora Valley, an area filled with towering wax palm trees. We checked in to our Airbnb and headed into the main square to stretch our legs and find some dinner.

Where was I, right so, we arrived at the guest house and the woman living there showed us to our room. As soon as I stepped across the threshold I went into a state of paralysis, there was a spider on the wall the size of my hand! At this point Cris realized what was happening and got a broom to sweep the spider out of the room while I basically melted down in the main entrance of the house. So once the spider was gone Cris escorted me back to the room assuring me that it would be fine, that the spider was outside now. We walked back in and another giant hell-spawn crawled out from behind the bed, that was enough there was no way I was going to be able to sleep or stay in that room. Again, Cris got the spider outside the room and then covered the cracks under the doors with towels to make sure nothing else could come in. At this point I had started to medicate with wine, I was begging Cris to let me sleep in the car and I’m pretty sure at that point I was in tears and he was trying his best not to laugh at my insanity. Finally after 2 bottles of wine I finally was brave enough to go back into the room to try to sleep, I did make Cris leave the lights on because I didn’t want to be surprised by a spider. Apparently the wine worked because in the morning we woke up with the lights on, both exhausted and I was a bit hungover but I had survived. Luckily we started the day with a coffee tasting so that stemmed off my tiredness a bit, afterward we went on a tour of the plantation, which in the day is very beautiful! 

Sidenote: This was the first time that Cris had seen this extreme overreaction from me, I’m surprised he didn’t just leave me to be eaten by the spiders….  

Next up was Medellin, the former home of Pablo Escobar. Generally Medellin gets a bad wrap for being a very dangerous place full of narco traffickers, and while there may be some truth to that, we thought it was beautiful. It is a huge city with sprawling mountainside neighborhood slums that were once very dangerous but are getting better and better each year. There are 1.25 million people that live in these slums, half the population of the whole city, so the houses are stacked on top of eachother or anywhere they can find a place. While we were there we took a cable car to Arvi, a nature preserve on the top of one of Medellin’s hillsides. The park was cool but the best part was the birdseye view of the slums. Now there are immaculate graffiti murals everywhere, and the city has installed escalators to make it easier for the residents. It is really incredible to think that half of the population lives like that. We spent a few more days visiting the botanical gardens, the old town and even jumped on a hop on hop off bus. Medellin is so huge that I feel like we only scratched the surface of what the city really has to offer, it is definitely on my list for places to return to someday!