Day 16: Medellin, the Drug City and Envigado, the nature walk.

It's been a pretty busy 2 days with excursions around town. I did both the Comuna 13 and an Envigado hike.

The Comuna 13 was with the same tour group as last week's Guatape - and yet and still, LATE. Had some good tour guides, Susanna and Vanessa, young, but a mix of young and old of a crowd. It's a nice drive in a small CHIVA and a quick arrival. Upon arrival, it's exactly what people think about Colombia when they think about the drug history - I mean, to the extent that this is probably the area where all the photographs were taken - a whole lot of small houses on a super steep hill and you can barely see any streets below.

And that's Comuna 13 - the area where drugs ran rampart and the guerillas and government went at it - at the expense of many (thousands) of civilian lives. Luckily, and most recently, and agreement came and an escalator was built - this allowed for the residents to get up and down the hill with a little more ease (there are 7 of them I think to go up one area), but mainly as a tourist attraction.

And what an attraction. It is so crowed up there I probably caught every foreign disease around. Too crowded. And it's not all that great. Now, we got to the top and the view is nice of the city (Guatape is better overall and you can see much of Medellin many different spots) and one guy brought his drone - that was cool as hell. Especially because he would take pics close up and then moving away while you were waving so you can see the extension of the entire city! It was amazing! He sold me on that!

There are a lot of stores and goods and restaurants there, a lot, and good stuff too, like crazy ass paintings and frozen drinks etc. That was worth some of the journey - much better than the town of Guatape. I say GO so you can learn the history, it's very important because you can't even imagine what residents had to go through back then (meaning in the last 30 years), but also, what they have to still overcome now.

Once we departed the city, the CHIVA turned into a party bus. Music was too loud. I sound old, I know. But after all that, I wanted to relax. Granted, they all had beer (that the company made them pay for) so maybe they were loose, but I was older than them. There was a grandma there too with her granddaughter (about 18) and they were just like, yeah ok.

Good trip overall. Got ready for this morning to meet with a different group to do a nature hike.

The nature hike called 'green connection' on Expedia, wasn't exactly what I expected. Overall, I enjoyed it, but the description left one to be surprised - and the 2 others that joined (one from Germany and another from France) agreed.

SO it was just the 3 of us and our guide David who was cool and I loved that he did some studies on the birds and such prior to getting us there. We went up the mountain down in Envigado (so not far), but there were no stops - so therefore, from whence you left the hostel (which I did not stay at and walked 20 mins to), you had no bathroom until you got back. There were no restaurants, so bring your own snack (David did bring bananas and a chocolate piece for us. The hike was not a typical hike - there were areas you had to crawl on all 4s. If you hurt yourself (like one woman in another group twisted her ankle), good luck. No one can come get you except the fire marshalls which would take all day. I definitely slipped and almost hurt myself. There was a time we literally rock climbed a wall! At the end, there is a nice waterfall you can swim in and take all the routine selfies everyone else is taking. But apparently, it was super busy today and with so much crowd, we could not stop and talk about nature much and most of the nature was gone/hiding. Most of the trip we were focusing on not slipping down off of anything. The biggest surprise was that you had to walk in knee deep waters multiple times, like 10 each direction. The trail goes right through the river! Cold as hell. But serene. For adventurers, this is a good excursion. Not sure about nature lovers, it's hard to see a lot. Definitely a place where there are different butterflies (like the clear winged one) and some wild flowers (including the invasive Ojo de Poeta), but since it was just too human tourism today, couldn't see if this would be the #1 spot to go.

So back to the apt I went once we completed the journey and to HELLO Burger down the street to see how they can cook an American dish (actually pretty good, the fries - not so much).