Solento, St. Rosa, Pereira, Medellin, Caucasia

In the hostal Iguana in Cali I found information about a B&B called Plantation House in Solento which is close to Armenia in which I was first planning to spend a night. I went to Solento and on the bus I met Stephan from France who was also going to the B&B. The drive along the Cauca Valley was beautiful. I think that after the Sacred Valley in Peru the Cauca Valley is my next favorite valley. The mountains are green with palm trees and also evergreen trees (due to the altitude) and coffee plantations. The Plantation House turned out to be a really nice place and I very much enjoyed my stay there. It is owned by Tim, who is British, and his Colombian wife Christine. Tim told us that in the village he is known as "the gringo with a dog" because he owns a Collie named Charlie but I told him it's more "the dog with gringo" because Charlie is the most popular persona living in the House. He accompanies the tourists who stay at the House everywhere they go and goes with them to restaurants and bars and dances in the evening and makes sure, as it's proper for a sheepdog, that the flock is back at the house for the night. There's also a female kitten named Stanley who lives at the House. The group of people whom I met there was really nice and we spent time together, eating breakfasts at the House, visiting the organic coffee plantation, going for dinners and lunches to the town square, talking in the evening, swinging on the hammocks in the garden, and dancing salsa on Friday night. Rianna, who is Dutch, met Roberto and Diego from the nearby city of Pereira and their Serbian friend Jelena (they became friends when they were in college in Paris) when she went to the observation point in Solento and they invited us to go with them to the hot springs of Santa Rosa and then their friends' farm near St. Rosa. We got to Santa Rosa in the afternoon and Roberto's and Diego's friends drove us the 10 km to the hot spring. The hot spring was very sophisticated; it consisted of a nice walk up the hill to the few pools of various shapes with fountains and a natural waterfall. We stayed there until midnight. We got to the farm where the rest of the friends were waiting for us and there was a small party with whatever drink we bought for the Saturday night fiesta. I dropped out soon after we started talking (I was so relaxed by the hours spent in the water) but they were talking until early morning hours. We went back to St. Rosa for a nice breakfast and then we went to Perreira. In Perreira we split: I went to Medellin and Rianna and Stephan decided to spent the night there with our newly met friends. I got to Medellin in the evening and walked around the sophisticated district of Poblado - with it's palm trees and little shops and cafes it looks a little like West Palm Beach in Florida. The next day I went to explore the center of the city. I saw the main square and I also took the metro which in Medellin goes above the ground. I took the two existing lines, north to south and east to west. From the border with Ecuador up to Medellin I only saw very nice houses, whether in the cities or in the countryside, nicely painted with lawns around them, many swimming pools, many sports centers for ordinary people with low ordinary price. Up to Medellin Colombia looks more like Western Europe than South America. It definitely looks better than Poland, let's say. In Medellin I saw the slums for the first time. It looks like most of the city is a slum: tiny brick houses built very close to each other or on top of each other. The river going along the east-west metro line is basicaly a sewer - there's enormous amount of garbage in it and the smell is formidable, also because it is so hot in Medellin... In Medellin one can see the division between the rich and the poor, so tipical of South America. Here, like in all other countries, there are entire areas which are wealthy and then other areas which are very poor. The villages along the mountains which I saw today on my way to Cartagena were also poor looking but I have to say not as poor looking as the ones I saw in Chile, Peru and Bolivia. In general people here seem to be happy and they tell me they love their country when we talk. I once read a report, a few years ago, about a research made regarding people's feeling of happiness in the world. The people, according to the survey, who felt most happy were Colombians. Where I have been so far it seemed safe but there are huge areas where there are problems with drug traffickers and gorrillas. I am reading a book I got at the book exchange written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez entitled "Notices of Kidnapping" about the kidnappings of the journalists in the 90s by the Medellin drug cartel leaded by Pablo Escobar. I didn't know it was so violent: young men from the slums were given prizes for killing police officers, the organization was blowing up cars and many innocent people died at that time. Pablo Escobar was killed in 1996 but the problems still exist, especially in the eastern part of the country. The other problems are the guerrillas and the paramilitary groups but that's connected to the big plantations and the division of the people into the very wealthy and the very poor. The places I visited look safe on the surface but there are things which show that there's higher security: to exchange money one is fingerprinted and the copy of the passport is made and special forms filled out, there are routine checks and searches of buses (men are taken off the bus and are searched thoroghly for arms), the police looks more like soldiers and carry big rifles instead of guns. At the hot springs Stephan and I were observing a man who was walking around, and then later cleaning the pool, with a big machine gun straped over his shoulder - it looked surreal in this blissful place full of families having fun.

I am spending the night in a small town built along the Pan American highway called Caucasia because I don't want to travel at night. I will continue my trip to Cartagena tomorrow morning. I hope it's a nice city because it looks like I am going to celebrate my birthday there!