Visit to Sante Fe de Antioquia

Sunday, 25th March Santa Fe de Antioquia (Medellin, Palm Tree Hostel.)

Character face

Last night a noisy crowd came in at 4.30am after starting their night-clubbing at 11pm. The last one staggered off to bed about 7.30am. Why do they think us sleepers want to know all about their exciting night out ? Oh, the joy of hostels !

Santa Fe is  a small colonial town to the north of Medellin. The guide books are now wrong about the time taken to get there, because in 2005 a long tunnel, maybe 5km, opened and cut some kilometres of winding roads out of the journey, now making it between 70 and 90 minutes. We took the Metro to Caribe, the northern bus station and caught what we thought was an expensive bus, 9,000 pesos. Once out of the sprawling suburbs of Medellin the scenery was spectacular, with deep gorges, green hills, and lots of rocks from rockfalls shovelled off the sides of the road. On the way the bus stopped at the small town of San Jeronimo which was very busy with a market, and after seeing Sante Fe we thought San Jeronimo might have been more interesting. Sante Fe is indeed a pretty little colonial town, but as we had already been to Giron and Barichara this year, and Villa de Leyva last year, we felt a bit colonial-towned-out. Unusually most of the churches were closed, except the one holding Mass. Alas, Iglesia de Santa Barbara was closed. There was a museum of religious art, where we were confronted with life-sized and brightly coloured carved wooden images of Christ and the apostles at the Last Supper.

Coconuts

The plaza was very busy with stalls selling artifacts, the local speciality of sticks of tamarind paste (beware, they still have the fruit stones, so don't bite hard), and germinated coconuts ready to plant. Lunch was expensive at 7000 pesos, but the plaza was much more interesting than going back to the bus terminal for a 4500 peso meal. There were many elderly and old men with character faces sitting around, chatting, drinking, but very few older women. People-watching is always enjoyable.

We got the last 2 seats on the 4pm bus back. Apparently no-one was prepared to sit up the front with the driver, so we got the best views.

On our return we went to have a look at the Metro extension, which is a cable car going up the hill to Santa Domingo. Just before getting to the place you swop from train to cable car there was an announcement, in English, about security. This freaked Barbara out as none of the other Metro announcements had been in anything but Spanish. She was somewhat relieved to see a huge queue for the cable car, which would have meant us riding the car in the dark. Maybe we will try again tomorrow when the Sunday crowds are at work. 

The Last Supper

Not wanting bread and bananas for tea for a third day in a row we walked to the local cafe and tried out empanadas. Greasy, as usual. Here we met a retired Swedish man who was engaged to the Colombian woman running the cafe. They were soon going to go back to Sweden for a while, as he really wanted to have some cold weather again, with 4 seasons, instead of the one that Medellin enjoys.