Day 514 – Barranquilla to Medellin
Leaving Barranquilla
Today we woke up and had breakfast at our nice hotel, Wyndham Garden Barranquilla. Even though we had been at a few nice hotel’s over the last month, we did not regret staying somewhere nice once more.
We packed our backpacks and left them at the hotel’s storage room. Before leaving Barranquilla, we wanted to meet my cousin for the final time. We met up at the shopping centre, Viva Centro Comercial for lunch at the restaurant Bendito Burrito.
After saying our goodbyes, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our backpacks. We caught a taxi via the Cabify app to the Barranquilla Bus Terminal. The taxi driver was super friendly and chatted with us, all the way to the terminal. I strongly disagree, but he told us that our Spanish was very good. I guess it’s better than someone who hasn’t tried to learn Spanish.
We were actually in Barranquilla a week before the Barranquilla Carnival. This lesser known carnival is 2nd only to the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. If we had known this, we would have stayed longer in Barranquilla, but after our extended stay in Minca, I wanted to continue travelling. The taxi driver said that Ricky Martin would be performing at the Carnival.
At the terminal, we walked around to find the best night bus options to Medellin. We went with a company called Brasilia Express, which would leave at 6pm. The tickets on the Redbus app were substantially cheaper, but we kept getting errors as we tried to pay for it. Therefore we had to buy the tickets from the counter.
We had lots of time to waste, so we found a nice cafe and spent a couple of hours slowly eating and drinking. We also purchased some snacks for the bus from here before going to the gate. The bus was 30 minutes late.
The single level Brasilia Express bus had comfortable seats and plenty of leg room. There was a toilet at the back and a Wi-Fi network without internet access. We kept stopping every couple of hours during the night for passengers to embark and disembark.
Every time the bus stopped, I checked to see if we were in Medellin or not on my phone, because there were no announcements about where we were. At night time, the bus was cold, but luckily we were prepared with warm clothes in the day packs.
Travelled January 2020
Main Expenses
- Lunch – Bendito Burrito – 54,000 COP (~$22 AUD)
- Taxi (Cabify) – Wyndham Garden Barranquilla to Barranquilla Bus Terminal – 28,000 COP (~$11 AUD)
- Bus (Brasilia Express) – Barranquilla Bus Terminal to Medellin North Bus Terminal – 120,000 COP (~$48 AUD) per person