medellin, armenia, salento.

i had a very good time in medellin, met a lot of travelers at the hostel i was staying at, visited with some of them the town of santa fe de antioquia, and then did medellin on my own...unfortunately, it being vacation time for the locals and being the middle of the week, i could not check out the supposedly crazy nightlife! next time...the center seemed a little scary from time to time, even though the guidebooks say it's one of the safest cities around...maybe it's also because of the movies about the infamous times that i have watched, such as "la virgen de los sicarios"...at the hostel the first night we watched another one like that, "rosario tijeras", and a lot of people said i had to check out "la vendedora de rosas" or something like that...
from medellin i took a 6-hr bus ride through some lush valleys to get to armenia, in the middle of the "zona cafetera", where most of the colombian coffee is produced. i am being hosted by J., a really great host, and today we checked out the Valle de Cocora, where some strange wax palms grow amidst valleys that seriously look like a lush-tropical version of switzerland! i didn't really get the whole deal with those wax palms, but maybe i will try to look it up when i have time...we took a jeep with a bunch of backpackers, so we got to meet a lot of new people too, and it was really fun! we hiked most of the day through the valley and then up to some farm in the middle of nowhere...
tomorrow i was going to go see the parque nacional del cafe, a disneyland-like park that's all about coffee...but i decided instead to go visit a local "finca" where they really make coffee! :)
and then after that i am onto cali, the salsa capital of the world, which also contends to medellin the prize for best-looking girls and best nightlife...so it should be fun! i will be there exactly for friday and saturday night, before jumping on a bus on sunday morning that will take me back to bogota, where my plane leaves the next morning...yes it's almost all over...sadly...especially when you're surrounded by people who spend 6 to 12 months around here! oh well...