Part 2, The Road to Medellin

First off, happy belated Thanksgiving. I spent last night dancing, yes dancing, the night away. Casa Kiwi is owned by a dude from Seattle, and he threw a little shindig for the holiday. There was a great band and there are some Colombians in the hostel who made me dance with them. And get this, they said that I am a good dancer, "better than many Colombians". Ha! The band wrapped up around midnight, but I decided to go to a club with some dudes from Chicago I met on a the Pablo Escabar tour earlier in the day. The club played mostly American songs from the 90´s.
Anyway, in the spirit of the holiday: I am thankful for all the great friends and family and all the support they are giving me. For 2010 being one of the best years of my life. For falling in love. For meeting new and interesting people. For being strong enough to pull the trigger on this trip. And for being on this trip.


So, here´s the second part of the update of the driving to Medellin.
Mike and I checked out of the hostel in Manizales at 12. We originally wanted to go to the nearby park, but the weather has been so bad it didn´t make sense. So, we decided to go check out the Wax Palms in Salento, which is about 1.5 hours south of Manizales. Salento is a tourist destination for Colombians. In some ways it´s sad because you can tell that they artificially created the town to look the way it does to draw in tourism. In other words, it was disneyland-ish. Not much to report about the town other than there are many more hostels than the Lonely Planet guide reports. In addition, the guide recommends the "plantation house", which I 100% disagree with. Shop around.
The hostel was one of my least favorites so far. It is run by an old guy from the UK and his Colombian wife. He seemed nice enough, but ran the hostel somewhat removed from the process. In other words, his wife was really the one running it and he loafed around. It may be that it was nice at one point, and that being in the guide book, they figured they could cut corners. The bathrooms were missing toilet paper, or soap, or there was standing water in them. The dorm room itself was decent, but I found out there was a leak in the ceiling that dripped onto the bed that I, as fortune would have it, "moved" out of. There is a story behind that that I´ll get to in a minute. The internet was slow and expensive for what you got. They tried to nickel and dime you. The guide book mentions a fireplace, which the owner will talk up when you look at the place. It is in a cabin and is a really nice common area near the second house where the dorms are. However, it is nearly impossible to start a fire. The wood is wet, and while they provide a small amount of oil to help start something, there is no kindling or starter paper or matches. We had to light pieces of wood on the stove and try to carry it to the fireplace. If you ask for help from the staff, they say they´ll do it and then never get to it. Lastly, they are incompetent and make sure you don´t take any advice from them. Here´s that story I mentioned...
Mike and I decided to try for Laguna Otun from Salento. We asked the owners wife if she had done it and what to expect. She said that the trail is a 3 hour round trip hike. There is a 3km dirt road to the trail head (El Cedral) and that it was doable in Mike´s Ford. Perfect, we could do it easily in a day even if we left around 9 in the morning. We left at 8ish to be on the safe side, got to the dirt road by 9ish, and broke the car around 10ish. We did ask several people if the advice was correct along the way, but got different answers from everyone. Half the people said that it was roughly correct and the other half said that it wasn´t remotely correct. Turns out it wasn´t remotely correct. The "dirt road" was filled with seep pot holes and rock jetting out here and there. It turned out that the road was closer to 10km long and that it wasn´t uncommon for cars with low clearance, like Mike´s, to fuck up their transmission pan. It also turned out that the hike was 14km long straight up, which meant that it was at least 8 hours ONE WAY. We would have had to camp at the lake! Well, we didn´t make it to the trail head because Mike´s car lost all it´s trasmission fluid via a giant hole in the pan. Luckily, we had stopped to ask about the trail again at a hotelish place. The kid there spoke enough English for us to ask about stuff and we got the correct info. We decided we´d do a smaller hike out of the same place, but when we went to leave, the car wouldn´t go into gear. The lucky part is that we were stuck at this, whatever it was place. Eventually, and after a lot of communication gaps, we got a lift to come out and tow the car back to Pereira. In the meantime, Mike decided it was best if he checked out of the Hostel. His worst case scenario was that he´d stay with, and sleep in, the car while it was getting fixed and I´d get a bus back. So, we got ahold of the English owner and described what happened and that he could give away Mike´s bed. Mike told him 2 times and I told him once which bed was mine and which was Mike´s. Guess what, he fucked it up and gave away my bed - hence, the "moved from" above, which ended up to be in my favor, but just added to the incompetence count in my head. Anyway, we got towed to an English speaking mechanic for a reasonable price. While we waited we walked around Pereira.
Pereira is a shithole. It has two nice things - a unique statue of Simon Boliviar (he´s naked and riding a horse at full speed) and a nice church next to the statue. Other than that, it´s got 1 million people, who are just freaking out the whole time. We went to a cafe overlooking the main plaza to people watch. The stress level of all the people rushing around and whatnot was palpable. You simply could not relax and enjoy the coffee. Also, the people are as ugly as the town. I didn´t see one attractive woman there and I am not exaggerating.
Anyway, the mechanic fixed the hole, but misjudged the amount of fluid needed, meaning waiting another hour while they go get more. Then, we found ants and he recommended getting it cleaned inside and out. Fine. Whoops, the cleaner screwed something up, ad another hour and a half. We should have left Pereira at 4, but because of all the stupid stuff, it was 7. Even though it was late, it could have been a lot worse, especially because we had left ALL our documentation back at the hostel.
Ok, I forgot two things about the hostel. After we got back, there was a gathering of other inmates in the cabin with the fireplace. So, we joined in and had a good time. The next day the key and lock to my dorm was missing. They decided to blame me. To some degree it was my fault because I was the last one to get the key. During the night while we were hanging out in the cabin I had passed the key on to another person in my dorm as this is what we had being doing since we checked in and due to the stupid system they had in place - we had to pick up the key from the office, walk to the dorms building, unlock the door, then walk the key back, then walk back to the room. If this was a safety thing, they failed cause someone could go in the room and go through our stuff while I´m returning the key (yes, they had plenty of time). I think it was a corner cutting thing. They didn´t want to pay for a normal door and lock system or keys. What they should have done was have keys for everyone in the room, which would have fixed the whole problem. Anyhow, I made sure that no, I didn´t keep them by accident, but that didn´t stop the wife from stint eying me the rest of my stay. Oh, and Mike didn´t have them cause he slept in his car. The second thing was, Mike talked to the Wife to just let her know that her information was wrong and she started arguing with him about it, even though we had first hand experience, to the point he had to just walk away.
The next day we went to see the Wax Palms. These palms are supposed to be the tallest in the world. There is a cool trail that requires mud boots or horses. The hike itself is quite wonderful (other than negociating the mud, areas with barbed wire, and sketchy "bridges") and winds up through plains, jungle, and then to farmland. Before the trail turns into a road and farmland, you hike 800 vertical meters to a pleasant little house and family. You can get nourishment if you choose and they are super cool about you just hanging around without buying anything. They had an adorable little girl and yellow lab. I have to say that my favorite part of the hike was the walk through the farmland. The views were amazing, sure, but what was really spectacular was the feel. It was just 3 of us, not really paying any mind to one another and walking in silence, some cows and horses, and giant Wax Palms. It wasn´t quite sunny, but I think that made it better. The whole feel was tranquility. I don´t know how to explain it, but I just had this feeling like I could stay for a long, long time.

So, Mike and I left the next day for Medellin. His driving became more aggresive and I am soooo happy to be in Medellin. I spent most of the car ride gripping the frame of the car and rigid. The no rules driving free for all is stressing me out. Thankfully, I only have one more day of that going back to Bogota tonight.
Oh, and Medellin is cool. It´s lively, clean, young, has beautiful people who are also quite friendly, and some interesting history. The touristy things that I did was take a cable car to the top of the mountain to see the city and a Pablo Escabar tour (really neat and inexpensive). Anyway, off to Bogota in a few hours and while it was nice to drive around with Mike, I´m ready to be on my own again.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Dylan