On the Road North

So, since we last conversed I have managed to make my way up the Peruvian coast, into Ecuador, out of Ecuador, and in to where I am now, a Colombian café in the town of Medellin. After the debaucheries my brother instilled in me during his stay, I was very keen to ‘lye low’ so to speak, and so from Lima I headed north to Ecuador where I quickly found myself on a plane, destination, the Galapagos Islands. Oh baby. Over the following two weeks I spent my time (and money, lots of it) under the water trying to convince sharks that I was one of them. I have now firmly established that I do in fact have a sick fetish for the glorious overgrown fish (sharks), and in fact, one night found myself asking a very attractive Scandinavian girl to move aside as she was blocking my view of the shark documentary which the kind bar staff had put on. Any how, I did manage to pry myself away, well more my wallet managed to pry me away. After spending a few days in the Ecuadorian capital (Quito for those of you geographically impaired, no names come to mind, Rosie) I shot the gap for a little town by the name Banos (for those of you that speak Spanish, the fact the town is called 'toilets', refers to the hot geothermal baths in town). I found myself in a lovely town, marred however by one unsettling aspect, it is perched under a fecking live volcano. A fact people had managed to omit when telling me about it, hmmm. It was a little disconcerting hearing the large rumble of a volcano with a bad case of the runs and so after deciding that death by volcano wasn’t on my list of things to do (yes it did take 4 days for me to decide this) I high-tailed it and decided that the coffee and Caribbean coast of Colombia were calling me. So started a three day bus journey courtesy of buses driven by men who seem incapable of understanding they were not in a formula one race and that vehicles can actually come around blind corners so it is probably not the best place to pass. Ben if you thought Peru was scary, well you probably would have just got out and walked these ones. After spending 6 months in South America I have become very use to the insanity that pervades the roads here and normally don't bat an an eyelid at driving on the wrong side of the road, passing in dubious locations, bus drivers downing a few 'cans' along the way and generally just driving like they no longer wish to live. So when I tell you that I was asking the mother next to me if she could spare a nappy you should take it as a strong indication that the bus drivers in Southern Colombia are nuts. To make matters worse the passengers who shared the ride of death with me seemed oblivious to our peril and loudly informed the driver he was behind schedule. "People, we are not in a fecking impenetrable life capsule, shut the flock up and let the man take as along as he wants". I pulled into Medellin a little on the green side of life (brought on by either fear, or my usual dodgy street bought breakfast served by an old women who doesn't understand the term 'clean' leave alone 'hygiene'), but at least I was alive and in Medellin!
Medellin is a town which is famous for, funnily enough, cocaine. This is the place where the cocaine trade grew up and blossomed into a multi billion dollar industry. I am happy to report that this is no longer cocaine capitol of the world and has moved on to a far better drug, coffee, but I will get to that soon. Medellin is an awesome city, very clean, safe, pretty and full of very friendly people. Colombia in recent years has become a rather 'sane' place and things seem more organised and sorted here than most of the other places I have been. This city even has a brilliant subway system which works a treat. Now Auckland take note, if Colombian drug lords can operate an effective public transport system, what does that say about you! Any way, back to more important things, coffee. As I was saying, the coffee market in Colombia is big business, they have guys walking around the streets with coffee dispensers on there backs selling the sweet nectary goodness for next to nothing, and unlike the rest of South America the coffee is actually really good! Any way I have to leave you now as I am off to fight the Colombian drug cartels by supporting alternate economic uses of the land, one cup at a time!