Colombia January 2016 | Out on the town in Medellin

We had a great Friday night out on the town in Medellín with Gloria, heading out on foot at about 8 pm from Gloria's casa. First stop was for ice cream and fruit mixta, finely chopped and mostly juice, served at “room temperature”, which here in Medellín is a comfortable 25C, all the time. Not quite dinner, it's two food groups without the cookies. From there we walked through the plaza of the site of an enormous sports complex. There are five swimming pools, diving towers, a sandy beach for volleyball, a spot for everything you can imagine sports-wise. It's like Kinsmen and Commonweath and the South Campus facilities all in one. It's all linked by sidewalks—and everyone is active at something. We were tempted to join the zumba class in the plaza but those 20-somethings looked pretty buff. No point getting sweaty. The main walkway through has the names of all of the countries who competed here in the Games of South American and the Carribean, we are told, and is dotted with food outlets and cafes. To see the activity here you'd think Medellínites are the most fit people in the world.

We hopped the train, our host pointing out the shiny floors on the platform. She's right. It's spotlessly clean. The metro took us to the cable car. Medellín has an integrated metro system that includes buses, rail, cable cars, an escalator apparently, and a ride, as long as you stay “inside” the system, is about 1 USD. The city is set in the valley below several very high mountains, and the cable cars were built to connect the pueblas that are on the outskirts to the centre of the city, making way for people to travel to work and school. It's part of a massive social reconstruction in the city made famous by Pablo Escobar.

We took the Aurora cable car. It was dark, so of course we had a great view over the city. We got in at San Antonio, checking first to be sure we hadn't forgotten our skis! Seriously, it's just like a cable car at a ski resort, except it's over a city of 5m people. There were several stops on the way to the top, or what we thought was the top, and then we started down the other side of the mountain, over a major 8 lane freeway, and up another mountain, At Aurora, we stopped for photos. I noticed signs directing to six pueblas that would otherwise be hours of riding or driving from the centre of the city. It took about 20 minutes.

Arriving

Mural at the top

On the metrocable

Down to town again, and a short walk to Calle 70, the hot spot obviously on a Friday night. We ate street food, drank beer with Colombiana (ginger ale?), cruised the street with the jet set, and everything else three señoras probably should not do on a Friday night in a strange city. But Gloria knows her way around, and managed to have songs dedicated to us at her favourite pub. 

There are meat stands like this lining the street. Beef, pork, chicken, potatoes rice and salad on offer.

Empanadas!

This post has been sitting around waiting for me to figure out my photos. We spent the weekend in Guatapé at the cabaña. ¡Mas tarde!