Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

After a year in mostly small towns and villages in Ecuador, we realized that we are not city-vacation people, but we still enjoyed our time in Medellin. We celebrated both Canada Day and Pride in the city (Pride was a much bigger deal, but we did see a few Canadian flags too!).

After an overnight flight, we spent our first day just relaxing and eating all sorts of things we couldn’t get in Olon. On our second day, we took a cable car through some hillside neighborhoods and a guided tour of Comuña 13, which was an area greatly impacted by the drug trade and is now a tourist destination. It was interesting and we enjoyed the cool graffiti, endless stairs/escalators and frozen mango treats…but it also felt weird to experience a tourist party mixed in with memorials. Worth seeing, but I’m guessing there are better ways to understand the history of the area.

Oh, and true to form given our terrifying cable car experience in Quito at the beginning of our adventure, this cable car also got stuck in midair due to some sort of mechanical difficulty…but unlike in Quito, there was no hail or lightening. Phew.

The next day, Kyla had to work so Talia and I went to the Explora science museum, which was fun, but super crowded due to a school holiday. On July 4th, Kyla had the day off and we were able to escape the hustle of the city for a great horseback ride in Retiro, outside of Medellin. Talia enjoyed a lot of galloping on her final helmet-less horseback ride of this South American adventure.Læs mere