Medellín, Guatapé

After spending Sunday through Thursday in the hustle and bustle of Medellin, I had to get out and recharge in a smaller town for a few days. My Aussie buddies Brad and Jon recommended me a place about 2 hours away called Guatapé.

My two Irish buddies who I actually met in Santa Marta decided to come along for the journey.

We took a bus from Medellin that looked like it was featured in "Pimp my Ride." Full exhaust, exotic paintjob, sound system with thumping base, the works. And the craziest damn driver ever. I swear my head hit the ceiling a few times from this guy flooring it over bumps in the road.

We got dropped off in the center of this gorgeous little town where everything looked like it was from the set of Candyland.

Guatapé, as little as 5 years ago, was a former FARC stronghold. The government installed an army base there, and since then, all guerrilla activity has fizzled out completely.

Found the hostel, threw our stuff down, grabbed some beers and a few fishing rods, and headed straight to the lake.

The guy who's property it was just made us pay $6000 pesos (~$3.00 USD) for whatever fish we were keeping. We ended up catching 5 fish, totaling a net weight of 5ish pounds after gutting and deboning.

Nothing makes me happier than catching a fish and cooking it yourself that day.

The Irish boys and and American girl who tagged along had never done any sort of fishing before, so it took them by surprise when I grabbed the first fish and broke it's spinal cord with a rock to ease it's suffering.

The owner of the property, Daniél, did us the favor of gutting and cleaning the fish (which he did in about .2 seconds).

Soaked from the rain, hungry, but proud as hell of the catch, we headed back down the mountain towards the town so we could get the barbecue going.

As we were walking down this winding country-mountain road, a young guy with his dog caught up with us and struck up a conversation. We were a little apprehensive at first since he was carrying an extremely large machete, but he couldn't have been cooler.

I gave him a beer, to which he was elated, and in turn he gave me his phone number and an invitation to his finca. As if that wasn't enough, he insisted that he show us around to the interesting parts of town.

Further on down the road, we ran into a bunch of soldiers hanging out in front of the base. They were friendly as could be, asking us about our fish, how we were going to eat it, where we were from, what we though about Colombia so far, etc.. Keep in mind during this conversation, they were armed head to toe. They all had automatic weapons bigger than I've ever seen. They took a swig of my beer, and invited us to go fishing in the lake on the base with grenades. Satisfied with what we had, we regrettably declined the offer.

When we finally got back to the hostel, we fired up the grill and prepped the food. We stuffed the fish with salt, pepper, garlic, onion, butter, and sliced limes. All wrapped in tin foil to seal in the moisture. Worked like an absolute charm. Add in some garlic tiny golden potatoes they grow locally, and some Cuba Libres, and we were in business.

The dinner was amazing. After tirelessly eating tuna sandwiches and pasta countless times while on the gringo trail, it was certainly a treat.

Around midnight we headed into town to try and score some rum. It was absolutely deserted except for the main plaza and it's surrounding watering holes, yet not once did we feel unsafe at all. A local told me that I was safer here in this town than any other place I have ever been. Including America. I believed him.

We found some rum, and a huge group of locals who invited us to their house for the afterparty. Nicest people ever.

When we finally got to bed at God knows what time, we planned to wake up earlyish so we had enough time to climb the gigantic rock.

Woke up about 9, got a ride in a took took to the base of the mountain, and headed up. Within 10 steps, rum from the previous night was seeping out of our pours.

700ish steps later, we were on top. My quads burned like mad, but the view was completely worth ever step.

Hopped on a bus to Medellin, and left Guatapé in the dust.

The thing about this town is, how many more towns like this are there? I'm sure there's thousands littered across the country. I'm starting to get scared of my March 2nd return date. I've gotten so many recommendations for small towns, it's not going to be enough time!