Medellín and the Hostal of the Lotus Eaters

After the 6 day trek to Ciudad Perdida and return to Santa Marta, Lane and I moved on to Medellín. Medellín is the industrial and fashion center of Colombia. After years of financial ingress thanks to Pablo Escobar, the Medellín Cartel, and a certain renowned party-in-a-powder, there´s a Metro and bustling metropolis within the Antioqueño province. Actually, that´s not particularly fair. In amicable random conversations with people, they often sarcastically offer us a warm welcome to "the most dangerous country in the world." As times are stabilizing politically, most people are thrilled to see pioneer tourists wandering back into their country and have come up to us on several occasions to tell us so. "Will you please tell the world when you leave here that we don´t have marijuana plants growing on our roofs, that we´re not terrorists, that our country is beautiful?" So there you go, world. There are no words to describe how beautiful Colombia is, its people are the most helpful and friendly I´ve met, and it has set the bar immensely high for the rest of South America.

A little high priced and pretentious for our tastes, Lane and I were able to forgive Medellín based on the fact that neither of us had been anywhere with so many beautiful women in one place our lives. We stayed in a hostal loaded with rastafarians from all over the US and Europe with a large affinity for some of the plagues that Colombians have been trying to get rid of. This proved to be annoying after a short amount of time, watching people stare at walls and talk about balancing the universe on their fingertips for 12 hours a day, everyday, and never seeing any more of Medellín. Impressively (or perhaps pitifully), there´ve been a few people hanging out at said hostal for months on end, which makes me wonder how the hell they manage it. After about 3 days I experienced the same Island of the Lotus Eaters itch I felt in Amsterdam 2.5 years ago, and we headed on south, while we could still get out.