We spent the next two days exploring Manizales on foot and by bus. It is a large city (400,000) and we just touched the surface. Highlights included:
1. Coffee (flat whites) at the cooperative Juan Valdez Cafe, a chain of coffee houses like Starbucks that are supposed to benefit the coffee growers,
2. A walk about in a fancy mall,
3. Exploration of the historic district with a unique concrete cathedral
4. Dinner at a 50s restaurant
Then we took a harrowing, early morning taxi ride to the main bus terminal for the trip to Medellín. Our driver set a new speed record on curvy, steep downhill, narrow roads -- and we had not even mentioned being in a hurry. Not stopping at stop signs, passing in the face of oncoming traffic and demanding the center of the road are all the norm here. All that said, we made it safely to the terminal and caught a bus that was leaving immediately.
The road between Manizales and Medellín has been described as one of the prettiest routes in Colombia. It did not disappoint. Lovely cloud forest, coffee and banana plantations, rivers, little towns...all beautiful and bucolic after 4 days in the city.
We arrived in Medellín about 5 hours later and took a taxi directly to our hotel in the Poblado district. Medellín is enormous, about 4 million...about the size of L.A....and in a valley surrounded by mountains. The Poblado district, however, is small and manageable with its tree-lined streets, many restaurants and shops. We had planned to take a "free" city tour the next day (as we did in Bogota), but we were concerned about making the tour early in the morning, so we opted to explore on our own.
The top trip advisor recommendation for Medellín is to take a ride on the metro cable. So that is what we did. We took a bus to the metro station, hopped on the light rail train (really nice, new and safe--better than BART in the Bay Area), rode it to the Cable Station and then hopped on a gondola and rode it up the side of the mountain, passing over neighborhoods that defied gravity as they clung to the side of the mountain. San Francisco needs one of these systems to help walkers up and down its hills. When we got to the top of this hair raising journey, Roger wanted more. So we took another gondola ride to the top of the mountain and into Arvi park, a national forest park at the top. Once there, we grabbed a guided 3 hour tour, the only way people are allowed to explore the park. There was a viewpoint of the entire Medellín valley, and a part of the walk was on an ancient colonial road paved with stones. Pablo Escobar used this road to bring weapons into Medellín.
The next day we took the metro downtown to the Museo Antioquia which has an eclectic mix of Colombian art. Most stunning was a collection of Botero's art and his personal collection by other artists. Another room had a collection of personal effects encased in resin (about 1 foot square) of victims of the violence that has smothered this country for so many years. The cases with the effects of babies or children were the most heart wrenching.
After the museum, we visited the botanical gardens and the butterfly house. A great day of exploring the city by metro. Our first night in town, we had Colombian pizza--not bad. The next night wake had a vegetarian meal of rice, stir fried veggies, salad, and yucca with guacamole. It was served with an horchada type drink.
We had only two full days in Medellín. While it is a gorgeous and interesting city, clean, lots of trees, surrounded by mountains, we had had enough of cities. On Monday, we caught a taxi to the airport--about 45 minutes away, over a mountain range and in the next valley--for Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast.
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