It's not just another Bogota post!
Mark and I spent Holy Week (a heavy vacation time in Colombia) in Medellin! He had Thursday and Friday off, so I found a flight that routed me through Bogota on Wednesday. He bought the BOG-MDE leg so we could meet at the airport. I also opted for the five-hour layover so we could guarantee he could work a full day before meeting me. Given that I had a few hours here and there, I made a work day out of it too - watching Pluralsight courses on the plane and spending my two layovers on the wifi writing blogposts and responding to support requests. I was supposed to find a fancy lounge to hang out in (with my Priority Pass), but the international terminals didn't connect. Plan thwarted. The free wifi in the airport was strong enough (better than Mark's apartment, cough cough) to be productive.
Mark made it to the airport, early even, forgoing a nap to hang out with me for an extra hour. He had booked a hotel for us "near the airport in Medellin." (Who can guess where this story is going?) The international airport is about an hour outside of Medellin near a town called Rionegro. There's also a tiny local airport in the south of Medellin. (Who can guess where this story is going now?) The plan was to meet up at the airport with his cousin Ken, his Colombian wife Aleja, their kids, and her parents on Thursday after they landed at 1pm or so. When we discovered that the hotel that Mark booked was in the city of Medellin, by the local airport, we nixed that plan.
We didn't sit together on the hour-long flight, but it was just as well since we both slept. After gathering our luggage, we took a taxi into town.
Driving at night makes it tough to get the feel of a new city. We wound through the mountains to get to the valley that was Medellin. The road started weaving down into the valley between buildings and trees, and the lights of the city peeked between and below.
Our Ibis Hotel, same brand that we stayed at in France, gave me the foreigner price, taking the VAT off, which turned it into a $40 room. We were by the Industriales metro stop, which, ten years ago, would have been a bad sign for any sort of restaurant or nightlife. Thankfully, trends start to take over industrial areas in cities, and we were recommended "Mercado Del Rio." The front desk attendant vaguely pointed in a direction and told us to cross the street.
We were walking along, partially trying to find food, mostly enjoying the upper 60s fresh air, when some confusing booming club music came across the divided highway. (It was those songs from the 2000s that are fun and good, but you never hear.) "Must be a gym," Mark guessed. The people walking away from it weren't dressed like that, and the phone wasn't showing anything else, so we walked toward it to find - Mercado Del Rio!
It's kind of like if Union Market and a giant outdoor bar had a baby. It was two stories, with the upper one a balcony that overlooked the stalls and booths on the first. Downstairs, chairs and tables were interspersed with twenty different types of food. We wanted a more traditional experience, so headed upstairs to the seafood-themed restaurant. A giant screen was playing a football match on one side, and across the courtyard was an area with fake grass and bean bags.
It was so cute and new and trendy and totally my jam. We ordered three very mismatched things from the menu, and topped off the southwest spring rolls, buffalo-sauced French fries, and squid and octopus risotto with a lychee cocktail. Mark got to try lychee for the first time, and I got to take his picture as he played with the tentacles on our plates. ("Pulpo" is one of those words you want to know so you don't get surprised. We'll see if he remembers that vocab word for octopus later.)
We returned to our small but adequate hotel room fat and happy. The accidental booking was already paying off, and when we woke up on Thursday, it continued to be a godsend.
Instead of twiddling our thumbs in the mountains outside Medellin, we were up and ready to go at 10am or so. We sat down to breakfast at a cafe nearby (that had chalkboards and stylistic plywood and this cool staircase - I am such the clientele for these places) before following the instructions given by the front desk to get to "the sculpture garden."
In Mark's slightly outdated Colombia tourist guide, it mentioned a few parks, including Cerro Nutibara, which had "sculptures and a path up to the top of a hill in the middle of the city." There is also Plaza Botero, where over a dozen sculptures fight for space with the vendors, tourists, and locals walking their dressed up dogs. (Good thing all the sculptures are of fat people or animals.) I wanted to see both, but I was thinking we'd go to Cerro Nutibara first, saving the plaza for time with the family.
Anyone shocked that our vague request of "sculptures" meant that we got instructions to the latter? A "few" metro stops away, and we'd be there!
During breakfast, Mark and I strongly disagreed on how to get to this place with sculptures we had been given directions to. I insisted we should take the metro; his distrust for the safety of Colombian public transportation and the cheapness of cabs made him vote for a taxi. I don't think I convinced him as much as he just loves me and was willing to give an inch. (Maybe I should learn that lesson sometime too, but my urge to travel like a local was strong.) The bright sun followed us the three long blocks to the metro station, over a pedestrian bridge.
Mark bought us four trips on the metro, so we started toward the stop we had been told: "Parque Berrio." It was at about this time that I was starting to get suspicious that the sculptures we were headed to were a little farther than the ones I remembered in the guidebook. I pulled it out on the metro, while cruising above the city with awesome views of the city climbing up the edges of its valley with red-bricked houses and the occasional skyscraper.
We got off the metro in a throng of vendors, all of them spaced out in the shade of the metro bridge and station. Juice, fresh fruit, the snail-racing guy (you know, just squirting water at these cigar-sized monopods), the guy playing three-cup monte, and myriads of others - we were greeted with an orchestra humming along. It wasn't hard to spot the first of the sculptures - a Monopoly-looking mayor with tiny arms. I didn't ever get a great description of Botero or his art, but he's a son of Colombia and might be making a statement on the gluttony of... capitalism? the world? humans? A pair were staring at each other, the male's metal genitals being fondled by each selfie-taker and the female's chest rubbed gold from touches. Writing about it now, the unapologetic indiscretions of the handsy observers could be another layer to this art about selfishness and impropriety.
I didn't think too hard about it at the time. There were cute dogs everywhere. All with clothes. Unlike all the statues.
Mark and I wandered by some stores, including a shoe store where a pair of sandals caught my fancy. Ultimately, they felt weird and plasticy around my ankles, so I opted for no, but the little girl in the shop staring at me was an adorable helper.
A sign for tourists pointed to an area with "handicrafts." We passed a park with another statue or two, noticed the spiral street lamps for the first time, and ended up at Parque San Antonio. The guidebook mentioned it was a place for pickpockets, but we sat down in the shade to relax out of the sun and decide our next move. That involved Mark checking a few things on his phone. A woman with leathery skin and a cart full of who knows what came up and shook his hand, jabbering about something. (I used my best hand-on-the-chest-means-I-am-not-shaking-yours bow/nod to avoid this. I learned it in Qatar for when people want to avoid touching others out of propriety, but it works when it's uncomfort or disgust too!) Soon after, a white-haired man walking his (surprisingly naked) Jack Russell came over to scold us. Mark's phone use was too relaxed for the cobblestoned park, especially with a pair of young men behind us also hanging out. At least, that's what I gathered from the Spanish and gestures he was stringing together. We got up and walked across the plaza to appease the gentlemen, and probably for our benefit as well.
On the other side of the plaza were a pair of "peace birds," also by Botero. In the late 90s, a bomb had been placed inside one and detonated during a concert, killing some attendees. Ten years later, he put a new statue in its place - a mishmash of the bird and the metal shrapnel it turned into. The other, intact, stood next to it. And ten years after that, we visited, with the greatest thing to fear the pickpockets we had already thwarted. Or, for Mark, maybe the diseases that the beggar lady had on her hand.
We were thinking it was time for a bite, or a drink, and, though the area around the plaza was filled with white plastic chairs and tiny bars being run out of the columns of the park, we decided to keep moving. Sitting near where we'd been suggested to move from didn't seem like the smartest plan.
I enjoyed the Mercado by our hotel so much from the night before, I suggested we just head back there. We found the stalls of handicrafts while heading back to the metro. No Christmas ornaments, but some leatherwork, and the textiles that Medellin is known for. I sadly already have a hammock that I never use.
We used our final two trips, which meant that the machine wants you to insert the card instead of tap it, so they can recycle it. After figuring that out, we soared above the city to lunch.
We ate down in the stalls. I had a crepe, Mark had a pork sandwich, both of us had mixed drinks. With all the fresh juice everywhere, we were both pretty disappointed with the fruit in our cocktails.
When Aleja called, letting us know we still had another hour of lunch and hour of transit before they'd be in Medellin proper, we took matters into our own hands. I got a pineapple and banana smoothie, Mark a strawberry and orange, and both of us got shots of rum. My faux-pina-colada was just right.
With that much more time to kill, and a whole nother park with sculptures, there was a plan forming in my head that Mark wasn't quite on board with initially. The wind had started picking up, and just a block away from the Mercado, the cloud in the south officially became a thundercloud with a few flashes of lightning.
But, it wasn't raining yet. And the cloud wasn't moving fast. And... what's a better story than getting caught in the rain during an adventure in Medellin!
Spoiler alert: a better experience is not getting caught, which is thankfully what happened. I made a deal with Mark - the second we felt a drop of rain, we'd find a taxi and wait in the hotel lobby's bar.
Sadly for him, after we got to the hill with 200 steps, it still wasn't raining. I thought the sculptures were at the bottom of the park on the hill; instead, there was an "art walk" that was 95% of the way up Cerro Nutibara.
I wasn't feeling the altitude as much in Medellin as I had on Bogota, but those stairs were still no joke. They must have been extra miserable for Mark, who was convinced the sky was going to open on us any seconds. But we made it, thankful for the breeze and clouds that moved the temperature down to the high 70s.
The art walk was pretty meh. Two sculptures could have been pretty impressive, but both had graffiti and one had a gaggle of teenagers draped over it. Still, fifteen feet of metal artwork in the middle of essentially a rainforest was something to look at.
At the top of this hill park was Pueblito Paisa. A paisa is a local from the mountains around Medellin, so this tiny square was supposed to be a bit of time travel to what a village would look like. The recipe is the same: a church and a plaza. It came from Spain and still holds true, as we would see on Friday when we saw these pueblos (towns) for ourselves.
Past the museum of the citizens (Museo de Cuidad) was an overlook across Medellin. We got a good view of the ominous cloud still headed toward us, as well as the green mountains surrounding the city. The valley is oriented north-south, so the metro is a single line running along it. We could see the city airport just to the south and the more downtown area where we'd been that morning to the north.
True to my word, when a raindrop splashed down, I stopped taking a picture of the weird statue of natives standing on top of a dead puma, and we started scouting for a cab. A few were parked in the lot, but none had drivers. No ubers were on top of the mountain, so it was time for desperate measures - go back down the stairs. When we got to the bottom with only a few more fat drops, we just continued onward over the pedestrian bridge network that led to the metro station and across to our hotel.
Mark enjoyed a beer, I enjoyed watching the African wild dog puppies on the National Geographic Channel at the bar until Carlos and Ken picked us up.
Ken called Mark using his father-in-law's phone, and we saw them outside. Greetings were exchanged, then Mark and I hopped in to join with the rest of the family at Carlos's mother-in-law's house - if you're following, that's Aleja's grandmother.
We drove through Medellin to a city just to the north - Bello. During the half hour ride, Carlos was narrating, Ken was editing and translating what he felt like, Mark was trying to follow either side and hop in with some Spanish of his own, and I was picking out a word here or there and nodding. Nouns are good. Adjectives aren't bad. Verbs are terrible. Or, in Spanish, terrible. (See why adjectives aren't bad?)
It was this polyglot mess that only continued once I met Aleja, Martha (Aleja's mom), the two girls, and a cousin, cousin's kid, uncle, and grandpa for good measure. We chatted on the second-floor porch overlooking the church, above the bar that Aleja's family owned. Mostly in English, we were overruled with Spanish by family coming in and out, and the girls asking in every language for attention.
As I was soon to learn, the minute we got there it was time to think about food. First was the cake, to go with the beers. An hour or two later, the empanadas were acquired from a vendor down the street. They were so crispy and delicious, with an uncharacteristically (for Colombia) spicy salsa to go with them. (Martha was fanning her mouth.) After three of those, I was told that wasn't dinner.
The church across the street had finished their service and had commenced their procession. We quieted down a bit as acolytes swinging incense were trailed by priests under a cloth held up by pole-bearers.
Afterward, the eight of us (Martha and Carlos driving, Aleja and the kids in one, Mark, Ken, and I in the other) caravanned back to their house. As much as they think about food, there wasn't any urgency to it. The girls started getting ready for bed, Mark and I got to see the apartment and sit for a bit, and Martha eventually started getting some arepas and sausage ready. Since I was full of empanadas, I was in no rush. In fact, the entire time we were with Carlos and Martha, I don't remember feeling hungry once.
We sat around the table once the girls were (mostly) in bed and conversed with much more ease than I expected. Aleja switched fluently between, Ken did some translating whenever Mark started yelling "help," and I did a lot of smiling and nodding, intermixed with some confused looks and gestures. "Rico" - rich, or good - was used frequently, as was "no gracias" as more food and beverage was extended to me.
We wrapped up dinner while I got the retelling of Ken and Aleja's wedding. "Chocolo" arepas were promised for the morning, and Mark and I went to bed in Aleja's brother's old room.
To my amusement in the morning, "chocolo" arepas are not chocolate. Instead, they are a sweeter and yellower corn that the ones from the precious evening. No matter - I got some hot chocolate instead. After telling my story of getting hot chocolate and Baileys at a bar in Bogota, Martha immediately started looking for the Baileys to add. "Manyaña", tomorrow, became the gracious way to say no as our eager hosts catered to our every suggestion. (Ken got a button sown on a pair of pants just because it got pointed out.)
It was Good Friday. While some of Colombia is religious and crowds into the overflowing churches, many use the two days off as an excuse to holiday. Bogota was much emptier than normal when Mark left it. No one remarked about the traffic much in Medellin, except for saying more vacationers were out.
I didn't really know or understand what the plan was for the day. At some point, I gathered we were going into the hills, so bring a jacket. Martha offered me her warm scarf, so I took that instead. We got into the cars and headed out... somewhere.
Given that it had been nearly two hours since breakfast, it was time to stop for a snack after twenty minutes or so at El Retiro. The road ran by a version of a rest stop, if they were made of wood and had boutique stores as well as restaurants. The boys got aquadiente, that licorice liquor that I had made faces at when drinking it in Bogota. I got boiling hot chocolate. There were more empanadas as well as a crunchy chip, then we were off again.
We cruised through the soft light of the green mountains. It was like the hills of Portugal and of Fiji, with a touch of midwestern farming. Signs warned about pumas, sloths, and armadillos, but we just got the views of rolling farmland with trees everywhere.
At some point, Mark and Ken and I nodded off. When Carlos started slowing down and asking people questions when we got to La Unión, only then did I realize we had a real destination.
Lacteos Buenovista had frozen yogurt, like Carlos was looking for, but also had so much more. The menu was a cheese-lover's delight; the recommended main dish was a mozzarella roll, with basil and prosciutto wrapped inside.
We started with a lazy Susan full of tastes of their cheeses. And by that, I mean Ken and I had already checked out the store where they were selling their products and had gotten to try everyone of the dozen drinkable yogurts they produce, so we were well on our way to being dairy-ed out.
But that was not an option. Instead, we had to fight valiantly to try all the cheeses, including the spreads, then have a piece of that mozzarella roll. Standing up felt nice, moving around to check out the view and the little herb store was pleasant, but then back in the car and a food coma overwhelmed all of us passengers.
We finished the triangle by heading toward a town near Rionegro called San Antonio de Pereira. A common day trip from Medellin, it had a church and a plaza full of food and vendors.
Since the last thing I wanted to do was eat, we wandered and "shopped." Their older girl had seen the ponies that were being used for rides, so Carlos waited with her, Martha sat at a patio nearby, and the rest of us tried to avoid the food in the square block of stalls.
We peeked into the church at the head of the square. It had large draperies over the altar in a brilliant green. I discerned (potentially correctly) from what Aleja was saying that the churches have elaborate Easter decorations, so the drapes hide the displays until it is time for them to be revealed at midnight on Easter morning.
Avoiding the food ultimately was unsuccessful. Mark and Ken found a dessert place and got creamy cake slices. I convinced everyone it was a good idea to get the roasted ants.
I truly believe that bugs are the protein of the future. I also believe I will never be eating this particular type and preparation in the future. They "tasted like peanuts" only in that the first chew had some salt and some roasted flavors. After that, while the legs were coming off and getting in your teeth, a terrible rotten taste took over. Just one of the bugs, and I was put off of them. I wasn't ever sure if Carlos was laughing at us because he thought they were good or he was so amused we had actually bought them.
The sun was setting, and the girls got a final ride on a children's bus that was pushed by the attendant - slightly different than the rides we'd see later at the fancy mall in Medellin.
We circled the small plaza twice, looking for Christmas ornaments (still no success for a Colombian ornament), instead finding lots of chintzy jewelry and an entire stand of dog accessories. The chihuahua that had motor goggles and a leather jacket might have gotten its outfit from this merchant.
We'd exhausted our entertainment and decided to head the hour-ish back to Medellin. Carlos' car (which me, Mark, and Ken were passengers in) didn't make the detour at Martha's mother's house. Given the time, Carlos found a few ways to dally.
First, since I had been asking about viewpoints along the road, we just pulled over after the toll booth on the north side of the long, narrow valley Medellin was in. If we were stopping anyway, I wanted a picture of the valley, so I sank into the fresh dirt around a house that looked like it was under construction to snap a picture of Copacabana, Bello, and Medellin. The guys followed me, and Carlos started pointing out and explaining various aspects of the city below. I didn't catch any of those. Across the valley, though, was a "agua"-fer (or however aquifer is pronounced in Spanish) which was the source of the city's water. Carlos thought his city's water was very good; I'm just happy tap water is drinkable!
We moved around to the back of the house, where I completely missed walking by a large dog that Mark pointed out. Turns out, someone was inside the house. Carlos called out to him and explained our little trek adventure, and we continued back around the small lot to the car.
At this point, it had been nearly an hour since Mark's dessert and our terrible insects. We were nearly home when Carlos spotted a "perro" stand. Hot dog!
These sausages weren't particularly large, but they were layered on with topping after topping. Coleslaw, lettuce, sauces, and two different layers of crunchy chip crumbs! A feast that Mark and I were definitely going to share.
When we got back to the house, I was still not hungry, so I left the hot dogs and found some beverages to start drinking instead. Carlos had a Christmas present of some nice scotch, so Mark and Ken grabbed glasses of that.
Carlos asked me what I did for work (mostly via Ken - I figured out what he said only after Ken translated), and I said software engineer, which might have been translated into a computer engineer, which was what Carlos studied to be at the "polytechnic." With Ken only translating every few sentences, the three of us listened as Carlos told us about his experiences in technology. Now, if you've ever listened to anyone who has been in tech longer than I've been alive, some of the same topics come up. With Carlos, I could understand some of the same technical language (megabytes, cassettes), some of the miming he was doing (long rolls of tape, punch cards), and the common tropes of a conversation like this ("giant room for one computer", "get it right or start all over", "so much room for so little storage"). Between that and the repetitiveness of the conversation (based partially I'm sure on the couple fingers of whiskey in his hand), I knew when to laugh, when to shake my head in astonishment, and when to nod knowingly. Maybe this Spanish thing isn't so hard!
It was a good hour or so before we stopped waiting for the other car to arrive and started in on the hot dogs. My half a dog was perfectly textured - crunchy, saucy, that snap to the sausage itself. I didn't try to keep it in the now mostly-disintegrated paper carton; I ate it with a knife and fork.
The women and the girls made it back slightly after the "perros" were finished. Kids were dealt with for a bit, then the grown ups sat around the table. The first thing Mark pulled out was Love Letter - a quick game of comparisons with some simple strategy that lasts around five minutes a hand. Carlos and Ken both caught on (after I translated the instructions into Spanish on my phone), and we played a few rounds of that. Ken, with help from his daughter, picked the right card to play a handful of times and got enough wins to finish the series.
After that, a deck of cards came out, and we started with a version of gin - five cards instead of the ten they often did. After a few rounds of that (with nearly everyone but Mark winning), Mark (unsurprisingly) was looking to play something with a little less luck but also five people. Spades and hearts weren't known well enough; euchre and bridge require only four; and everything else I could come up with was luck-based. I poked online for a minute before finding instructions to "juse."
No, I did not pick it just so I could say we had "gin and juse/juice", though I am now thoroughly amused by the coincidence.
Since it was a new game, Mark couldn't tell right away that it was just as luck-based as everything else we'd played, but we entertained ourselves with two rounds of the card stacking and swapping game before heading to bed.
Towards the end of the evening, the group started recounting Ken and Aleja's wedding - from their first date where Aleja was so bored she was thinking of ditching in the middle, to their two lovely girls now. At some point, Carlos pulled Martha into his lap and nuzzled something in Spanish into her nap. Decades into their marriage, and they were still acting like lovestruck teens. It is something to aspire to, for all of us. After a few more displays of adorableness, Mark and I headed to bed.
Saturday dawned, and Mark was definitely feeling the fun from the night before. A little juice from an orange fruit that I've now forgotten about (and some Excedrin), and he perked up enough to eat the cheese-infused fried bread balls. We had first tried them at the food tour at the market in Bogota, and they continue to show up and be just as delicious. The granadilla (brain fruit!) was also ripe and easy to eat - you just crack the outer coating and suck out the grey stuff. ("Try the grey stuff, it's delicious!")
It was a slow start to the morning. I had requested to see the Botanical Gardens, so the crew got ready to take some cabs to the metro, then ride to the gardens. By the time nearly everyone had their shoes on, Mark was hungry again, so we heated up some cheese balls to go.
We sauntered to the front gate. A small playset and swing were inside the community, so the girls entertained themselves as the group slowly congealed. Once we got to the gates, Carlos suddenly decided that the cabs and metro could be too taxing for the girls, and they wouldn't be able to sleep like they could in their car seats. He did an about-face and headed back to get the car, as we had the pair of cabs we called pulling up.
Mark and I didn't understand most of what was going on, so when we got put in a taxi, I just hoped someone would be there to tell us the next step when we got to the metro.
And Ken and Aleja had made it too. The grandparents were figuring out the kids, so we bought tickets and waiting the five minutes between trains. Despite asking for round trips, Mark paid for and was given a tap card with two rides. We had figured out on Wednesday that if your card only has one ride left, you have to insert it (so they can recycle it) instead of tapping it.
A one-way trip was something like 2500 pesos. That's roughly a dollar.
We hopped off five or so stops later and walked down the massive concrete structure supporting the train to the entrance to the gardens.
I was expecting a fee to get in, but, despite having opening hours and being walled off, the botanical gardens are really just a city park. With a few restaurants and a stage.
We reunited with the other generations in the orchidarium, which, disappointingly, had no orchids. There was no clear explanation of why, but it was easily climbing into the high 80s, so maybe heat?
The littlest was highly entertained by pushing her stroller around, and the adults started directing a path around the park. In a few hundred feet, we came across a restaurant called "In Situ," with a three-story high ceiling in their windowed dining room. It was probably only slightly larger than it was tall, so we were told to come back in half an hour for a table.
The park had much more to explore, so that wasn't hard. The child's pace meant that we were continually feeling like we should be seeing something when the kids were happy just stopping to smell the - well, not a lot of flowers, so plants I suppose.
We rounded a bend to find the lagoon waiting for us. This pond in the middle of that park had ducks, but not the mallards we're used to. Instead, they were black and white, closer to geese than ducks, with these vibrant orange bills. Visitors were tossing chip crumbs and puffed junk food, which the ducks, some diving birds, the bigger of the fish, and the turtles competed over.
The animal that didn't go for the scraps? The giant iguanas sunning themselves and going for slithering walks around the pond. The littlest daughter of Aleja's was pushing her stroller past one and did a double take to get a pet in. We dissuaded her.
It was roughly time for us to be back to the restaurant, so we meandered back that way. The table was ready, we were given water in giant goblets, and the menus were passed around. We ended up with only a few for the entire table of eight, but decided on some drinks and some food and sat back to chat.
Mark and I were pretty low energy from being in the sun and having a late night the evening before, so we watched as the girls became the center of attention for their parents and grandparents as we listened to the Spanish flowing around us.
Aleja's cousin was in the city as well, so she appeared with her family. Chairs were acquired, and another little face was added to the stage of attention. I got my limonade (which was actually what we'd considered limeade) and sat back.
And waited. And waited. The food just wasn't showing up. The kids were delivered their chicken nuggets, so they finished their nibbling and were ready to be done before we had any hint of ours. The leftover nuggets turned into an appetizer for us, as we got more and more twitchy.
Martha called over a waiter to ask. "It's on the way" was the best he could do. But then added, "If you had been faster to order, then this wait wouldn't have been as long." (All translated to me after the fact, so take the accuracy with a grain of salt.)
Adding that last snide remark really made Martha fume, and Carlos took the kids into the courtyard to play with the kids - he was just going to take his meal to go, with that kind of service.
I would say the meal was worth the wait, but the mood at the table was not one for forgiveness. The food was excellent; Mark and I shared a salad and a pasta dish that were both very good. Everyone else liked theirs as well, but we were all going a bit stir crazy. It was now nearly 4 and the park closed in half an hour. We'd seen at most a quarter.
Mark and I left money with Ken before taking a lap of the park ourselves. No kids, sated stomaches, and we stretched our legs to the fullest. We found the butterfly house (the "mariposas" were closed for the day), the admin building, a corner with a group playing an abbreviated form of dodgeball, and lawns with people picnicking, napping, celebrating, and relaxing all over. We walked past the stage, with a green lawn in front and a wall of leaves behind, to find a trolley called "Vagon" with ice cream treats and the rest of the group. We did another lap to explore while they stood in line.
We circled back to the entrance to see the palm garden and a market where you could buy plants. We cut through the "rainforest path." As Mark quipped, "all they had to do was leave it natural and build a boardwalk."
Back to the trolley, park mostly explored, Ken and Aleja wandered with us through the desert section and found the security guard interrupting couples to tell them the park was closing.
With no plans and the girls in the capable hands of their grandparents, it was time for a final bit of fun before our flight the next day. Aleja remembered a mall called El Tesoro near her university that had good views and places to eat and drink. We took the metro to the closest stop, then wedged the four of us into the clown-car-sized taxi to go up the mountainside.
The metro is straight down the middle of the valley, which means amazing views above all but the church steeples in Medellin. Underground is much more efficient for the cityscape, but above the rooftops is so much fun as a passenger.
We took the switchbacks up the mountain, with Aleja recounting her days of driving this route (with less traffic and more gusto than our driver) while the sun was making its way closer and closer to the mountaintop.
When we got to the mall (which, Aleja kindly told us, hadn't been bombed for over 20 years), we headed to the top floors with bridges with views to the opposing mountains. The sun had dropped behind a cloud on the very tall horizon, but the effect of the sun, the peaks, the valley, and the jungle through it all wasn't lost on me.
While part of the mall was the typical indoor experience, we spent our time on the side with a large, tree-filled courtyard in the center. As we walked around the central area, a story or two down, we heard the chugging of the children's train, the shrieks as a ride flipped its daredevils, and the steady hum of activity. The air was dropping to right below 70, so my uncovered shoulders got a hint of chill after we sat and ordered cocktails at Archie's. The table backed up to the courtyard, like I wanted, and yet the trees meant that only bits and pieces of the fun park below were observable.
Martha called to check in. We were going to switch the order of things, and have a drink and some dessert before heading home for the (unknowingly awesome) dinner prepared for us. Aleja, at the same time she was ordering a plate full of sweet crepes, cautioned us not to eat too much. While Mark had ordered multiple times from "Crepes and Waffles" for delivery, and amazing me every time that his ice cream and crepe are still intact after the trip, I hadn't yet experienced it. I am also just now realizing that this name is in English, so the Spanish-speaking customers much think it had an uncommon name (versus us Americans that think the name is very obvious). My torte was the perfect blend of ice cream and chocolate, and the perfect size to be ready for the adventurous dinner ahead.
While the adults were playing, the grandparents had begun preparations for a great feast! The kids were pj'ed and kissed goodnight once we made it back to Invigaro after another clown car ride, and the bowls of meats, cheese, and mushrooms came out. We were going to use their raclette grill, which had cubbies under the surface to toast.
First, we made bread, tomato, and cheese appetizers under the top grill. Next, we threw on some of everything: chicken, steak, mushrooms, fish, and - obviously - raclette cheese. I was fussy at first with seeing which utensils touched the raw chicken. After I started eating, and everything was so delicious, I stopped caring. As Aleja said, Martha had bought everything fresh, so I'm sure it was fine.
The cheese was definitely the crowd-pleaser. I didn't care for the white fish, but really liked the chicken. And when you got a stab with some beef and some sautéed mushroom? Delightful. We sat around, chatting, eating, deciding we were full, putting more on the grill anyway, eating more, rinse, repeat. I set down my fork, sure I was done, at least three times. But the caramelized edges of the cheese kept calling to me. Despite the egregious amount of dairy we had eaten the day before at La Unión, I was still obsessed.
Fat and happy, I watched the interplay between the families, with Aleja speaking to Mark and I in English while continuing to engage her parents in Spanish. My eyes were drooping, so once the grill was cleaned up, I made an exit to bed. Mark followed not long after.
Sunday morning, Easter morning, was the typical slow start. We got arepas for a final time, I got my second mango of the trip, which made me extremely happy, then Carlos insisted on driving us to the airport. Ken came along, and we were dropped along the curb with hugs and "hasta luego"s. With plenty of time before our flights, Mark and I tagged along to each others' check ins. A hug, a kiss, and a "see you later", and I was off to the international terminal.
Remember how I was trying so hard at the Bogota airport to find a fancy lounge? Right next to my gate was an elevator to a room with a free bar and all the croissants and trail mix I could want. Mission: completed.
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