Bus ride to Medellin, Colombia

May 1st, 2009: My friends woke me up on Friday at 6:00am, 6:07am, 6:12am, 6:36am, 6:56m, 7:01am, 7:02am, 7:03am and finally at 7:18am. What finally helped me get up from my cozy bed was that I changed my mind and decided to take my friends offer and go with them on a bus to Medellin. The taxi was going to be at the hostel to pick them up twenty minutes after I officially woke up. I packed all my traveling possessions (42.5 pounds of it – minus my carry on backpack) and made it with minus 3 minutes to spare. I am not sure if this was a good idea looking back at it. Perhaps I should have stayed longer. Too late now…I am already in Medellin. I hate planning but I only have 52 days left before I have to leave the country and reenter or go somewhere in Bogota to request an extension.

I may not understand Spanish but not so fortunately for me, I do understand simple pictures. Okay…what does a circular sign with two black cars side by side mean? Oh, you can’t forget the red circle with a slash across the middle. I would like to answer this question without having to expend a lifeline by calling a second grader. It means, do not pass. My driver with perhaps too many head injuries as a child, must have thought it meant to accelerate around the blind curves while passing on the mountain pass. Since there were no mighty metal railings hugging the curves, the passengers - yes me included - didn't even have that false sense of security that it would stop us from going over.

I am not sure how we didn’t get into an accident…but somehow, we didn’t. I would have paid a premium to sit in the front of the bus to see the action up close, but I was painfully seated in the back of the bus with the rest of the foreigners. It was excellent ride, a ride that I would have paid to go on even if I didn’t have anywhere to go. If I only had enough money, I would start an international Indy car racing team. I would locate my team by going to these countries such as South America, India, Thailand, Nepal and even Italy – hmm, scratch Italy…it would cost too much. They would need no practice since they live it every day.

It took us about iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii – oops, I dozed off. I would say it took about 10 hours by bus to get to Medellin. The security checkpoint pit stops are included in this number. At these heavily guarded stops deep in the jungles, everyone must exit the bus and provide some sort of identification. The military will then take the ID’s and look through the “red book”. To my understanding of common sense, I would say…you really don’t want to be on the…”red book”. They were looking for F.A.R.C. and other organizations that don’t particularly get along with the current government.

On the way to Medellin, the scenery was beautiful. I was never a big fan on butterfly's but yesterday...I became extremely interested in them. The colors on these chick magnets (for some reason women love these things) were amazing. It felt as if I was at the zoo seeing all the new species of butterflies that I am not use to seeing except for in those insect friendly cages.

Eventually we made it to Medellin, the plastic city...