Medellín and Jardín, Columbia

I was really looking forward to visiting Medellín after so many other travelers had told me how much they enjoyed the city. It is indeed a nice city with a lovely climate. I sense that it is a pleasant city to live in. It is definitely a great city to visit if you like eating, drinking and partying.

However, I wasn’t really interested in the drinking and partying and I didn’t find much else to do. There aren’t that many museums or sights to visit to begin with and most closed down while I was there due to the coronavirus pandemic. All was not lost, though. I thoroughly enjoyed an exotic fruit tour through a traditional market and took a day trip to the pretty small town of Jardín, which I loved.

I flew from Cartagena to Medellín, another short, inexpensive domestic flight. Colombia is almost twice as large as France in area and has very few multi-lane highways. Flying is not much more expensive than taking a bus and saves many hours of travel.

In Medellín, I stayed at the Black Sheep Hostel in the Poblado District, a neighborhood known for its lively party scene. The hostel is located on a quiet side street a good distance away from the zona rosa (nightlife zone), which I appreciated. My private room with bath was clean and comfortable, the hostel well-run and friendly.

I ventured out one evening to explore the zona rosa. The bars and restaurants were crowded with friends out having a good time.  I was at a loss as to how to join the party. Everyone seemed local and to know each other and I didn’t think my Spanish would be good enough to carry on conversation in such a noisy, rambunctious setting. So had a beer by myself, ate dinner by myself, and had an after-dinner drink by myself, people watching and feeling pretty lonely.

I think that if I liked to dance (I don’t) and was willing to wait until the night clubs opened (I wasn’t), I might have found some company. Instead, I walked back to the hostel and called it a night.

The next morning I set off to join the exotic fruit tour that I’d signed up for earlier. I used Google maps to get me to the meeting point at a bus stop outside the Plaza Minorista traditional market.

Google told me to take the metro to the Prado station and then walk about a kilometer to the bus station. That walk took me through the worse neighborhood I would visit in Colombia. The street was lined with mostly open shops involved with metal fabrication, motorcycle repairs and other light industrial businesses; hardworking, dirty and rough. People in dirty clothes obviously under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol walked along the sidewalk. Others in even more dire straits lay asleep or unconscious on the ground. My skin color, the way I was dressed and the nice daypack on my back made me feel very conspicuous and somewhat vulnerable. I was really glad it was daylight. I’m sure I wouldn’t have lasted long there intact at night. But I made it okay.

As I drew close to the meeting point, I took out my phone to consult the detailed directions that the tour company had emailed to me, the first time I had looked at them. At the beginning of the email, in a box outlined in red, it said, “Although MINORISTA station is walking distance from PRADO and PARQUE DE BERRIO metro stations, we do not recommend walking between them, as this area can be unsafe.”  Ooops. I can confirm that that advisory is warranted.

I met my tour group and guide and we headed into the market. It was great tour. We stopped at various vendors in the market to taste 20 fruits that are commonly eaten in Colombia but exotic to visitors like me. We tasted maracuyá, mangostino, tomate de árbol, algarroba, guayaba, mamonoillio, curuba, borojó, guama, zapote, granadilla, chontaduro, uchuva, guanabana, cherimoya, lulo, feiloa, gulupa, higo and pitahya. That’s a lot of fruits!

At each stop our tour guide, a biologist by training, would explain where the fruit was grown, how it is prepared and eaten, how much it cost, its purported health benefits, its use in traditional medicine and other interesting points.  It is remarkable to me how much you can learn about a people’s culture by what they eat and how they eat it.

I enjoyed all the fruits, a few of which I had tasted before but most of which I had not. My favorite on this tour was the borojó, which I had never seen or even known about. It is a dark brown fruit with a hard, smooth skin about the size of a small grapefruit. To eat it, you have to wait for it to start rotting. As it rots, it becomes a ball of mush that has to wrapped in plastic to contain it. It has the look and texture of pureed liver. But it tastes delicious, a delicate banana flavor with hints of melon, citrus and other fruits, complex, like wine. It is usually blended with cold water to drink as refreshing juice. Yum.

My tour guide warned us that Colombians were becoming nervous of foreigners infecting them with the coronavirus. Her tour company was thinking about canceling tours due to this concern and to avoid uncomfortable situations. I had also heard on the news that Colombia would be shutting its borders to non-citizens in a couple of days. Up until this point, for me the pandemic was something happening somewhere else, something I was reading about, something I knew I would have to ultimately reckon with, but for now, was not affecting me directly. I started to feel my foreignness and how far I was away from home.

After my fruit tour I spent the rest of the day wandering around the botanical garden. It is huge, free and a respite of greenery in the middle of the city. It was also the only major sight that was not closed due to the pandemic.

I had only one more day left in Medellín before I travelled back to Bogotá to catch my plane back to the US.  I felt like spending it outside of the city and had read about the small town of Jardín, the self-proclaimed “prettiest town in Antioquia”. That sounded like a good destination so I headed from the botanical garden to the bus station to buy a ticket to depart the next morning.

I was up early to catch my bus. It was about a three-hour ride to Jardín on a two lane road that wound southward through hills and a river valley. I arrived around 10:30 a.m. and was surprised to find not only the cafes busy with customers, but the bars also. Based on their appearance, I figured that of the majority of  the people in the bars were from the local area; sturdy, sun-tanned, dressed in neat rustic or plain clothes, plenty of cowboy hats, big belt buckles, boots, too. It was beautiful sunny Sunday and they were clearly intent on enjoying themselves. By the afternoon, the bars were pretty loud and roudy.

Jardín is located in a valley in the vee where two rivers join together, hills rising steeply to the north and south on either side of the town.  At the center of town is a large beautiful plaza and a tall distinctive cathedral with multiple aluminum-clad spires.  Nice, open air cafes surround the plaza, many serving delicious locally-grown coffee. The town’s small streets are laid out in a grid pattern and lined with pretty, modest little white houses, many accented by colorfully painted windows and trim. The surrounding hills are a mix of cultivated areas- mostly coffee and bananas- and natural dry tropical forest. I had the impression that the town enjoyed a nice balance of many local residents, many visitors from the surrounding area, quite a few tourists from Medellin and a smattering of foreigners like me.  It reminded me a lot of Ville de Leyva, but with more locals, more rustic, smaller and less developed.

I climbed to the Mirador Cristo Rey lookout above the town to the north, crossing a small but swift running stream by way of a small, very old, shaky suspension bridge. It was a steep climb and I got pretty steamed up despite the cool weather and drizzle. The view from the mirador was beautiful, enhanced by billowing clouds of unsettled weather…and a cold beer.

I descended from the mirador and walked back to town to enjoy a nice lunch and explore more of the side streets. Then I hiked across town to its south side where a much larger and sturdier suspension bridge crossed over a raging river and provided a nice view of the Reserva Natural Jardín de Rocas nature reserve. The area is home to gallitos de las rocas, noisy birds with beautiful red plumage, but I didn’t see any.  The river’s rapids flowing through the tropical foilage made for a very pretty scene.

I caught my bus back to Medellín in the late afternoon. I marveled at the scenery on the ride back, lush rich green hills the backdrop to sparkling water dashing over river rocks, all augmented by the play of light cast by the end-of-day sun shining between clouds.

I reflected on my travels through Colombia and recognized that I enjoyed myself the most in the rural highlands of the country. I like the small colonial towns, the natural beauty, the hiking, the biking, the mild climate and the relaxed ambiance. I would really like to explore these areas, the Zona Cafeteria near Medillín, Boyacá and Santander near Bogotá more extensively.

My trip to Colombia was wrapping up, but I’ll be back one day.