Day 518 – Medellin
Parks and Recs
Today we wanted to explore more of Medellin by ourselves. After a delicious breakfast at Saman Hostel, we caught the metro train system to the Northern station of Acevedo. It was very sunny outside, reminding us of Spring back in Melbourne.
Arvi National Park
The metro system goes all the way to the Arvi National Park, via a few a few cable cars. The cable cars are actually part of the metro system, which is really cool. The first leg of the journey took us to the cable car station, Santo Domingo. From cable cars provide spectacular view of the city.
The city is in a valley, so the cable cars are a very intuitive way to connect the ‘poorer’ suburbs that we were travelling over. At the station we had to transfer into a different cable car that took us the rest of the way. This cable car quickly left the city which left us travelling over a sea of trees.
We arrived at the Arvi National Park around 11am. The main section of the park can only be visited on a tour. Unfortunately the majority of the tours are only performed in Spanish. The two English tours are at 12.30pm and 4pm.
After talking to the staff, we were told about a free walking trail that would take around 1 hour to complete. Our intention was to do the trail and return for the 12.30pm tour.
As instructed by the staff, we followed the signs to “Tienda Cafe Avri” and then we left the more established areas of the park along an empty footpath.
This footpath led us to a small junction (potentially a town) called El Tambo. From here we took a right turn and continued to Chorro Clarin without a real idea of what we would find there. The footpath ended after El Tambo and we had to walk along the road. Luckily it wasn’t busy. In fact we didn’t see a single car.
On the mobile application MAPS.ME we could see several paths that appeared to be shortcuts through the wilderness. We decided to go along one of these paths.
After managing to get back onto the road we bumped into some locals from Barranquilla. They thought that we were also locals and started speaking in super fast Spanish. However they quickly switched to English when they heard our broken Spanish responses.
Once we made it to Chorro Clarin, we were pleasantly surprised to find an excellent walkway and rest area. This would be a perfect picnic spot. We continued walking down the path, which also had a cycling lane to discover 6 more rest stops spread out along this path.
From one of the trails we decided to follow a random map and take a detour through the wilderness once more.
This path took us to the opposite side of the metro cable car station. Unfortunately it took longer than we were expecting, which made us miss the 12.30pm tour.
Instead, we found a small restaurant serving “menu el dias” (Menu of the days) for lunch and refreshments. After finishing our meals we took the cable cars back into the city.
Medellin Botanical Gardens
We got off at the metro station “Universidad” with the idea of going to the Medellin Planetarium. Unfortunately it was closed for repairs. Therefore we crossed the road for a more down to earth experience at the Medellin Botanical Gardens.
The gardens are relatively small, but still took us almost an hour to walk around. Entrance is free and there are several different sections to the gardens. After walking around for a while, we spotted an old train carriage that has been converted into a super cute cafe.
While enjoying our coffees, two well dressed ladies struck up a conversation with us in English. They were very friendly and curious about us. They turned out to be from a church group and all they wanted us to do was check out the church’s website. We thanked them and left after finishing our coffee.
On the way back to our hostel we went to the supermarket, Exito Wow. That’s the actual name, and I must say it’s named well. The Exito Wow was massive and had anything we could think of. Being backpackers we hardly bought a thing but if we wanted, it was there.
After buying some groceries, we returned to the hostel to cook dinner. We had been eating out a lot over the last few days so it was nice to have a home cooked meal.
Travelled January 2020