North to South

In case you´re wondering where the heck I am now... Colombia still has me. At least for a little longer. I´ve been heading down South from the North beach to check out some new cities here. Medellin was the next stop on route which was a very refreshing place to be. It made me realize how touristy Cartagena was. Walking down the streets there was a gauntlet of people looking for your money there.. I was a walking wallet. But Medellin brought a way more comfortable atmosphere for me.. both tempurature and people. I was there on a weekend and took advantage of the wicked nightlife there. I even found some good air guitar moments and a good mix of locals and tourists. It also has a great transportation system and Sharman and I did a bit of exploring on the metro during the day. Lots of good sites and art there... One thing though... it´s an expensive place to be for a backpacker. With that being said I wasnt there for too long. I took a bus to Cali on the Sunday to start making my way back to Peru.

Cali was a similar feel to Medellin... nice and expensive. When I went to my dorm room there was only one other guy in there. We started chatting and it turns out his name is Matthew and we both grew up in St. Albert. I graduated with his sister Megan Myers and we were both heading to South Colombia. Before leacing we checked out the zoo here which has a rep for being the best in Colombia. Then his friend there that took us to a cool lookout point above where I met Jesus, them to the mall to go babe hunting.

At the zoo

A 9 hour night bus ride with broken seats brings us here to Pasto for a much different type of experience. There are some political uses here with how the government wants to put an American military base here. There is alot of graffity here protesting it. We seem to be the only ¨gringos¨ here and it definately has more of a local feel. There are a few weird looks at us, however, Matt (goes by Ryan) has some friends here too so we´ve been hanging with some locals. They took us for a tour around the city, had some good cheap food, and ended up trying the local pasto at the University and watched some football (Soccer). Then went we drank cheap liquor out of the bag on a porch and ended up playing guitar in someone´s apartment till 5am. Today I had a nice big lunch for $1.50 CAN... that´s more my price range... Not sure how much longer I will stay here.. I know the locals want to go camping by a river here in a couple days.. I´ll go if I´m still around.. could be a good experience.. different... if not I´ll be heading down to a beach in Ecuador or Peru.

Gremlin lookin´ Monkey