Medellin Day 309 24/07/2015

The 0600 start wasn't too bad and we were at the bus station at 0730 prompt after the usual routine of packing, breakfast and taxi journey. Our bus to Medellin was scheduled to leave at 0800 but we were still sat waiting to get on board as the clock passed the hour. The driver and mate soon appeared, loaded the luggage and we set off just before 0830. It doesn't seem like we'll ever understand how the bus times work here! The journey was quite slow as we left Cali but we were soon on open road although the road conditions weren't as good as we've recently experienced. Cali is located in a huge bowl which we soon headed out of and up into the mountains again. The scenery was lovely, passing mountainous and fertile lands. We drove through the Zona Cafetera, the major coffee growing area. Colombia is apparently the world's third biggest exporter although it grows poor quality beans used mainly for instant coffee. We stopped just after 1300 at a purpose built mixed of restaurants and take aways along with a number of other buses heading either to Cali or Medellin. We shared an interesting lunch of chorizo platter and empanada washed down with coca cola. Still feeling a bit peckish we bought what we thought was a giant cookie only to find it was some type of solid dulce, hideously sweet and certainly something that any dentist would have a view on! Back on the bus we continued north, slowly as we wound our way up and down the mountainsides often in queues of traffic behind huge juggernauts. We finally arrived on the outskirts of Medellin just after 1700 and joined the rush hour traffic eventually arriving at the south bus terminal just after 1800. After buying our onward tickets to Bogota for Sunday we jumped in a taxi only to find the driver didn't want to take us so we got out and waited patiently for another taxi to turn up and checked that he would take us to El Poblado, the area we were staying in. We could only assume that the first driver didn't want to head into the busy traffic but we weren't really sure. We checked in at the InHotel, showered and headed out to get something to eat. El Poblado is full of bars and restaurants, most of which seemed very rowdy and all serving burgers of some sort, mainly pork. We finally found a Colombian restaurant nearby the hotel and enjoyed a nice meal although it was debatable how traditional the food was (Simon had steak and chips!). We headed back to the hotel, tired after a long day of window gazing, reading and snoozing on the bus.

The scenery on route

Lunch stop 

Our luxury bus 

More scenery