A Return To Medellin Colombia
After my weekend return trip to Panama City, I flew down to Medellin for a return trip there as well. It turned out that Copa Airlines had this special promotion where stopovers in Panama were free of charge. So a return flights trip from Toronto to Panama City was about the same price as Toronto to Panama City to Medellin and back to Toronto via Panama City again. This enabled me to visit Colombia again without paying extra airfares.
I had already seen the major attractions like Parque Arvi and Comuna 13 in Medellin back in May. This time, my main focus would be to do a day trip to a town called Guatape with the objective of climbing a giant rock called Piedra del Peno. But before this day trip while in Medellin, I got to sample more Colombian cuisine and local street life.
During the daytime I ventured into the El Centro downtown part of the city which is crowded and chaotic but full of local Colombian street life. I found a nice open air corner eatery to have a quick lunch and take in the street scene.
Below is a short video of another local street scene where I found fruit vendors outside one of the Metro public transit stations. There were no other tourists in the area besides me.
At night time I retreated back to the Poblado area of Medellin which is more suburban and upscale as I wanted to be close to my hotel which is in a much safer area after sunset. Across from my hotel is this nice mall called Ovienda Mall which has a very beautiful food court of which part of it is open air with its own garden.
The food court itself has a lot of choices at very reasonable prices so I sampled a few different Colombian dinners.
As seen in the above photos, they really like to include soups and juices for these Colombian dinners. Rice and meat were regulars for each dinner. I don’t eat red meat at home so the amount of meat I ate during my trip was enough to last a few weeks for me.
One thing I didn’t realize was there is a rainy season in Colombia and I got caught in it during this trip. It rained each day especially afternoons and evenings. I was hoping to get out on my day trip to Guatape and it wasn’t until the final full day I had in Colombia when the weather cleared up enough for a dry day trip. For this day trip, I got to the bus station for a two hour ride to Guatape and climb up the big rock Piedra del Peno which is in the next post.
