Last very tasty American diner breakfast, some shopping at the outlet malls (got new shoes for Thailand and t-shirts) and to the airport. Finnair/Oneworld business lounge seems to be very nice.
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The NYC visit went pretty fast, visiting B&H Photo camera store, an iceskating rink near Times Square, Apple store and so on. Just random sightseeing and shopping. In the evening we took our next (slightly delayed) flight to LA, picked up a rental car for the day and finally got to shower in a hotel after two days without. It was even a hot shower, a completely new experience after Colombia where they don't really have hot showers in the houses.
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Zzzh.. Some sleep on the plane and we are in New York, having the day for sightseeing before the next flight to LA.
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Today's program was a visit to Pablo Escobar's home, Hacienda Napoles. He used to import animals from all around the world to his private zoo and many of them still exist in the area that has been turned into an theme park and zoo. Too bad the historical buildings have been mostly destroyed, so the history part of the park was not that impressive. Colombia seems to be very actively trying to sweep that part of their history under carpet, removing anything that still reminds of it. Well, the zoo was decent. Then 5 hours of driving and we are back in Bogota, at the airport waiting for our night flight to New York. Will spend tomorrow there and continue in the evening to LA.
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Today it was boating time, an hour around lake Guatape to visit the former second home of Pablo Escobar, Finca la Manuela. The villa was built in 1980, badly damaged in a bomb attack in 1993 and been abandoned since then. There's also one of the biggest rocks in the world near Guatape, El Peñón de Guatapé. We naturally needed to climb to the top... Then again three-four hours of driving and we are near the next destination, Pablo's Hacienda Napoles.
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Stupid ideas are always the best ones, so we decided to try paragliding from the mountains surrounding Medellin. Scary but fun. :) Other than that, we picked up a rental car and drove a bit further from Medellin to Guatape for this night, to slowly approach Bogota.
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Climate in Medellin is much better, it's very pleasantly warm but not hot and humid as we are back at 1.5km altitude. Also the city is very green and well doing in the downtown, with a big international community. The day program consisted of getting up the mountain to visit the Comuna 13, a district of Medellin that used to be an extremely dangerous place during the drug wars. Nowadays it's doing much better, a lively but still poor district with a lot of street art and famous outdoor electric escalators. Also tried the Metrocable, a scary gondola system connecting the mountain suburbs with the city center and the metro system and had some beer and food in a market hall.
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Today's program was pretty much the parade and nothing else. We went to the parade street, waited in the extreme heat (I don't remember ever being that hot) for some two hours and watched the colourful parade for a while. Then slowly cooling down in an air conditioned restaurant, solving a minor mess with our laundry which was not delivered to the hotel unlike agreed and a late evening flight to Medellin. Tomorrow it's one more Colombian city to explore, Pablo's hometown.
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Cartagena is hot. 33C, feels like 44C says the forecast and it really feels like that. Hot and humid, like a greenhouse or a mild Turkish steam sauna. Seems we came here exactly at the correct time, the biggest festival of the city is the independence day festival and that is celebrated for a week, exactly now. The main parade is tomorrow and even today the city was full of parades and other celebrations. The day was spent just walking around, seeing the parades and the city and visiting a couple of cafes and bars. Some of them rated among the best in the world.
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Today it was sunny and no more holiday, and the city looked way more appealing and lively than yesterday. Streets were full of people and everything actually looked kinda nice. We visited the church on the Montserrato mountain with a scary teleferico, finally found an open shop to buy local SIM cards and went to the Museum of Gold. That was pretty much enough program of the day and when the evening came we headed to the airport and took an hour long flight to our next destination, northern coast city of Cartagena de Indias.
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