Diary of a Wanderer

Our day trip to Guatapé and El Peñon will forever stand out in my memories of Colombia. Natural beauty, views, colour, quaintness, adventure- this trip had it all. Our little bus took us directly from Medellin to the foot of El Peñon. There the enormous monolith stood in all its glory, as the zig-zag staircase that would take us to the top clung onto the side of it. We paid our entrance of 15,000 pesos and made our way up, up, up until 740 steps later we were surrounded by unimaginably spectacular views. The beautiful turquoise water, with its trim of orange from the clay edge, weaved around the land. It was like a maze which divided up all of the land and water, yet left it all connected the same time. The contrasting colours only helped to accentuate the beauty. It was truly amazing. We stayed and admired before contemplating the descent. When we arrived back at the bottom we found a tuk-tuk to take us into Guatapé. This quaint, colourful town did not di...

By the time the long awaited weekend break had arrived we were itching to get out of Cali and experience somewhere new! Albeit another city, we had heard nothing but positivity about Medellin. A four day weekend due to more school cancellations provided the perfect opportunity to discover what this city had to offer. Our neighbour had kindly written us a list of things to do, and it was clear that we definitely weren’t going to be bored. We arrived late afternoon and headed to our hostel which was situated in the west of the city, near metro station Suramericana, which was to prove incredibly useful to navigate us around the city. The metro system confirmed everyone’s description on the city as ‘organizada’, enabling us to travel wherever we wanted in the city with ease. With police situated on every platform, I felt a lot safer and relaxed; people even had their phones out and were using them without thinking twice about looking over their shoulder- wow, what a difference f...