I think Medellin is a nice city but my second visit was mainly due to the fact that it was in the middle of the road on the way to Bogota. I thought while I was there it would be a good opportunity to catch up on a few admin things, get a couple of bits for the bike and go and look inside a building that intrigued me and I missed on my first visit.

My first trip I stayed in El Poblado which was pretty touristy and this time in Prado. I booked into the 61Prado Hotel for 4 nights at $38AUD a night. A bit pricey but really nice and good parking for my bike. It is on a reasonably step hill and this always causes problem parking the bike to check in, especially in a busy street as you have to put the sidestand down in a way that the bike doesn’t fall over. I’ve managed okay so far but this was a tricky one. I seemed to be drawn to areas on the fringes of dodgy parts of town. It’s probably more to do with my budget but I guess I do like the choice of turning left out the door and it being a bit too local and risky or turning right and it’s nice and safe and touristy. Sort of leaning towards the pre gentrified areas.

Prado was exactly that. The barrio (suburb) is full of beautiful old houses of which many are in disrepair. Once the area of the wealthy, it went downhill during the bad years when Medellin was the most dangerous city in the world. I had a nice long chat in english with the owner who was originally from the Netherlands. He had knocked down the wall between a couple of adjoining houses and now has 26 rooms to rent out. No town planning. No building inspections or fees. And cheap labour. I was jealous. He recently brought the house next door and it is 400 square metres and he will be able to add another 25 rooms to his hotel. That building also has an amazing façade, which I forgot to photograph. He (his workers) also manually dug out underneath the house to a depth of 4m (and installed new supporting columns) so that he can have parking for several cars and motos like mine.

He also had a nice little bar and restaurant with reasonable prices so you didn’t have to go out at night if you felt unsafe. I alternated my evening meals between the hotel and on the streets in the dodgy areas. One night I found this funny little shop that sold amazing cakes. You could see the veins of carrot through this one so for health reasons I bought a piece ($2 AUD) and took it back to my room. I often do that with beers as well. They cost less than two bucks each, although in cheaper restaurants it’s not much more. Sadly the most common beer is Aguila which means eagle and reminds me so much of the West Coast Eagles that I don’t enjoy it as much as I should.

One of my main tasks was to get my bike it’s 3000km service at Honda. I managed to book it in okay but it required a 25 minute drive through peak hour Medellin morning traffic. It upped my heart rate a little and I only made one wrong turn but managed to make it there and back safely and felt happy for the bike. The bike has been going really well. I also managed to buy a better cover for it, although still not the one that I want. I brought some chain lube and a couple of tiedown straps but failed in my attempts to buy a suitable tank bag. I’ll try again in Bogota.

I also wanted to check out inside the Palacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe. I had seen the outside of the building on my city tour last time but didn’t get a chance to check out the inside. This time I did and it was. Mmmmm. Much nicer on the outside. Still worth a look but nothing special. I took a few photos and strolled through the building quickly past all the cultural artifacts that it holds. I was more interested in architecture and engineering than culture that day.

I also needed to look a bit more seriously at my schedule for the next couple of weeks. Being homeless and on the road actually requires a bit of work. So, I took some time out to do that and some laundry and to sleep and do sudoku’s. The one negative out of my time there was that I got a few bed bug bites. Fortunately not many. But they are so annoying. I told the owner, but I was understanding of it because we had them once in our B&B in Broome. They come in with peoples luggage and then crawl out during the night into the mattress. I’m itching as I write this. I just had a horrible thought. I hope they didn’t come in on my luggage. Yikes.

Anyway it was time to move on and head to Bogota. Google said 418kms, 9hrs 27min. But my first stop was a place that I first heard about when I started to do some research about South America way back when I was in Antarctica. It was a couple of hours out of the way but one of the icons of my trip. Guatape.