Piedraventura

"Piedraventura," or should I say PiedraTORTURA. Today Darlene, Eric and I took a 2-hour bus ride to Guatape and ‘La Piedra.’ As always, it was nice to get out of the city and get some fresh air. We arrived to La Piedra and were rushed by several of the local men trying to sell us horse rides up to the mountain; I am over the horse rides, unless it’s on a farm with someone I know. I don’t want to be led around on a horse by a stranger. Eric wanted very badly to ride a horse, but luckily Darlene and I stuck together on this one.

As we walked up to the hill and the rock was in sight, Eric decided to remind us that he was still afraid of heights. While I truly admire Eric for wanting to face his fears and do new things (this is his first time leaving the E.U. and he has chosen to live in Colombia for one full year), I did worry a bit that he might flip out half way up the mountain and what would Darlene and I do with a 6-foot Norwegian man that had gone catatonic? He made it about a ¼ of the way up the mountain at our pace and then started to get nervous, so decided to run up the stairs so that he wouldn’t get scared and turn back. It was a long hard stair climb, let me tell you, and has inspired me to use the stair climb machine next time I go to the gym b/c that sh!t is intense!

The top was amazing. Apparently, the area is a man-made hydroelectric dam. My Colombian mom says that it provides the entire state of Antiochia with clean water and energy. Colombia has a lot of impressive things, which makes me wonder why they haven’t figured out how to solve their comunas, 6 social classes issue? For instance, you have managed to build a HUGE man-made hydroelectric damn—that’s a lot of water, a lot of digging, a lot of thought and most of all, maintenance.

Colombia has also managed to make their sidewalks blind-friendly by creating patterns in the cement so that blind people can find their way on the sidewalk and stay on it without accidentally drifting into the street. They have two metrocable systems that can take people up the mountain like snow lifts, they build amazing libraries in and near the poorer neighborhoods (one of them looks like a pair of huge stereo speakers)…I just don’t understand why there are still people living in slums when it seems Colombia has all these resources. I suppose you could say the same thing about the U.S.

Anyway, while on top of the mountain, there were a couple of highlights…Darlene introduced Eric and I to a new coconut ice cream that I am officially in love with and I took a silly picture on a rock. Then we went back down…which might have been harder than the climb up. My calves burned for two days after this trip.

Next we took what might be considered a bus (it had two car batteries in the front seat, it stalled twice, and was so completely jerry-rigged that I can’t believe it held 15 people in it) to Guatape to see the town and enjoy some fresh fish for lunch. The city was very cute. All of the houses were painted bright colors and had drawings on the side of them. There were flowerpots hanging from all the roofs and bright flowers planted along many of the streets. I don’t know if Guatape is a genuine example of the original Colombian culture before it became so ‘modern’ (Westernized? Can we say that if it's in the western hemisphere?), but if it is, it is gorgeous.

On the main road we could walk along a lake and a string of restaurants that all pretty much had the same menu. This meant we could be harassed by both the men trying to convince us to eat at their restaurant, as well as the men trying to sell us boat rides. There was also some artesania, but again there wasn’t much diversity between what people were selling. At the end we picked a restaurant that had a lot of people already at it—hoping this meant the restaurant had a good reputation and the food was good. I ordered trout fried in garlic with a side of French fries and tajadas (fried ripe plantain) and fresh blackberry juice—it was amazing, even though the fish was served complete with it’s head and fins. Afterward, we just bummed around the city until the next bus was leaving, enjoying our bright and colorful surroundings.

It was raining in Medellín when we returned so we didn’t bother going out to party afterward. There are a handful of bars and restaurants located under a bridge near a traffic circle next to our apartment complex. Eric wanted to hang out there, but something about those bars doesn’t seem right to me…maybe it’s the idea that we’re drinking near a huge traffic circle and the pollution is settling in the bars, or maybe it’s the sketchy people I see when I walk by it (although today I learned that the sketchy lady that I thought was always sitting in one of the bars is actually a manikin--isn't that creepy?!), but we opted for pizza and a movie, and called it a night.