Today we were in the hands of Avianca again; a quick, on-time flight (yes – they can do that) got us from Cartagena to Medellin in the morning. We were picked up at the airport and made our way to the hotel to drop our stuff.

After a not so successful hunt for a restaurant for a quick lunch – and the following stop at an empanada place (yummy), we made it to the metro station (Colombia’s only metro). The plan was to ride the train to Acevedo Station and then change to the Metrocable line. Metrocable is actually a system of cable car lines, which is fully integrated into the metro system. So – where one changes to another metro line, commuter train or bus in other cities, Medellin had a few cable car lines included in the public transport system.

The idea had been to make it up to Arví Park for a walk in the park. However this day being a public holiday, the maximum number of daily visitors for the park had already been well reached, so – while we could do the trip up, we were not allowed to get off and essentially just circled back down again.

While the majority of the group now made its way back to the holidays, us ‘left-overs’ from the old group decided to use the time left and check out the city center. So we left the metro a few stations earlier to get a different impression of Medellin. We spent some time at Botero Park and wondered (once more) about the (for our tastes) ugliness of his works…

From Botero Park we continued to the cathedral and from here back to (another) metro station – downtown was really nothing fancy; fairly run-down and few people around (granted – public holiday), it reminded me somehow of the center of Sao Paulo from years back … similarly run-down in those days and similar sense  of (not-so-high) security. Actually downtown Medellin, was in fact, what I’d describe as the most dodgy place on the whole trip. I certainly would not want to be here after dark.
Anyway – we made it to the metro station safe and sound and easily got back to the hotel, to meet up with the others again.

We had dinner in a restaurant around the hotel; another great selection of Colombian food – and another opportunity to sample some of the local sausage specialties, including yet another morcilla. After dinner (and a lengthy payment process) some of us ended up for post-dinner G&T in the nearby Gin Palace with its heavenly (and mostly gin-based) drinks.