De Amigos A Familia From Friends to Family
For our last day in Medellin, we planned to book a tour to Guatape (in advance this time), spend the day there then go straight from there to the airport. This did not happen.
After dinner the night before, we met with a family member of a good friend of Taryn's. Taryn's friend, Simon's, cousin Sebastian met with us at the hotel for a couple of drinks. We had brought over a gift from Simon to Sebastian and figured it would be fun to hang out for a little. So we popped open a couple bottles of wine at the hotel's lobby bar to talk story.
Over the next half an hour of joking around and getting to know each other, we somehow found out that Sebastian brewed beer, chilled on an acre of land in Santa Elena (basically the country side) in a house that his family had built themselves, with multiple pets, and it just so happened he wasn't busy tomorrow. Instantly, Taryn and I looked at each other and while no words wre exchanged we knew what we had to do.
Hotel to Countryside Sebastian was more than happy to invite us over to his house to taste his beer and enjoy a piece of the quiter (and in my opinion better) part of Medellin. We packed our bags and left the hotel with no more than directions to catch the metro to Santa Elena and to call Sebastian when we got there. He would be dropping off beer at nearby restaurant.
Since we'd already gotten on the cable cars once before, I wasn't too worried about navigating without a guide this time around. We caught a normal train metro to a cable car stop and were on our way up into the hills in no time.
We did have to make one transfer to a second cable car system that went up and over the hill to get to Santa Elena.
Uhhh, donde vamos? As the minutes passed on, houses became more spread out and the cable cars became less crowded.
Eventually, there were no houses at all and we were just hovering over pure, Colombian forests.
Sebastian met us at the station and informed us that we would be taking a "taxi" to his house since his brother had to borrow the car.
Except in Santa Elena, there isn't really such a thing as taxis. They are more just like people who live there that need to make a little extra cash. Our "taxi" turned out to be a rugged sedan: Make-unknown, transmission-standard, manual locks and windows and as you can see a super high-tech dock. Every now and then the car would cough up a storm of ? but somehow continue running.
Casa de Sebastian We made it though, alive and well. We even stopped at a general store to pick up some empanadas to snack on. We met Sebastian's 15 year old dog, Nausca, his pregnant cat, Onza, and his turkeys Delicious and More Delicious (just kidding they didn't have names). Santa Elena reminds me very much of Kula. Crisp air, cool temperature, green - just a big, open, peaceful space.
