I think I’m in love with Colombia. I mean, just look at these photos! The beauty here is easily 10 times greater than can be captured in a photo and I don’t know how to express this any clearer and in a way you could truly understand without going to Colombia yourself.

Why Colombia?

I’ll admit, I had a bit of anxiety about traveling here as a solo woman. I’ve never been to South America before and there are so many horror stories in the news, even recently about people getting kidnapped or murdered or arrested for random things in Colombia. But after a few days of orienting myself, I can say that I felt very comfortable and very safe.

I chose Colombia for this year’s birthday adventure for 2 reasons: it was time for me to see some of South America, and I wanted to level up my Spanish.

I’ve been studying Spanish on Duolingo for 3 straight years now. I’m not lying! I have a 1168 day streak and I’m dedicated. I also get to practice Spanish every time I go to Spain. But I reached a point where I realized I would benefit from a more formal class and I found a very interesting one in Medellin, Colombia.

Thirteen days of vacation started in the Cocora Valley

I decided to take just under 2 weeks vacation because I didn’t want to leave my pottery class hanging for two weeks in a row. I’m very lucky that I have a student who is more experienced and happy to be my backup teacher when I travel. But of course I still feel responsible for my class, so 13 days it was. For the first few days of my trip, I decided to explore the coffee region and started in the city of Pereira.

I had a nice hotel booked near the airport because I arrived late at night. When I got to the hotel, the guy showed me my room, which was very nice, but the lock on the door was broken. I was not having that! He gave me a new room which was small and dark with no windows, but clean, with a rock for a bed, and a lock on the door. I slept terribly and was woken at 6 am to workers talking loudly outside my room as they fixed the lock on the room I had originally booked.

I then picked up my rental car from the airport and drove into the mountains to Salento, a small colorful town in the heart of the Cocora Valley. It’s a beautiful tropical region full of cocoa and coffee farms, and apparently some wild monkeys and large cats, which I didn’t see (but I did see the road sign warnings). I drove to an eco farm hotel hosted by a lovely Colombian man who spoke perfect English, and was taken on a tour through the valley to some beautiful waterfalls by horseback.

My horse’s name was Morro and he was cute and smart and knows more Spanish than me. The ride was close to three hours, and our horses ran through the field at some points, crossed a river where I had to put my feet up to prevent them from getting wet, trudged through knee-deep mud and trotted along the edges of cliffs in the mountains. It was just all so damn beautiful! And a little scary. Oh, who am I kidding, it was hella scary! But I felt so lucky and had an amazing time. We stopped after a couple of hours of riding and hiked a bit to get to a beautiful little waterfall. Surrounded by crashing water and singing frogs and tropical plants, I was in heaven.

After the ride, I then had to drive a couple of hours to get to a hotel that I had booked at the hot springs, Termales Santa Rosa de Cabal. This hotel was absolute luxury! I ended up spending $300 for three days and two nights, which included three fantastic meals a day, a massage and a facial, and unlimited access to several pools of hot springs.

The hotel was quiet and relaxing and everything I needed to recuperate from the very intense horseback riding and travel. There is also a day park hot springs about a mile away from the hotel with several pools and enormous waterfalls. Access to the park was included with the cost of my hotel. But it was crowded and while beautiful, I definitely preferred the hot spring pools at my hotel, which I often had all to myself.

Sadly, after three days I had to drive back to Pereira because my flight left early Saturday morning. But not so sadly Pereira is a great city! It has about 500,000 people, and the traffic is a bit of madness, seemingly all times of day. But it’s beautiful and tropical and warm, surrounded by beautiful mountains and full of such friendly, lovely people. I didn’t want to do anything too exciting, so while I waited to get access to my hotel room (check-in was at 4), I went to a nearby shopping mall and got fresh-made ceviche at a mall kiosk in the food court, bought some interesting Colombian feminist literature, and enjoyed my meal on a patio in the mall, with such an amazing view. The books weren’t cheap, but the ceviche was ($8!)! So delicious! I wish i had some now! But I went back to my hotel to chill out for a bit and get ready for my flight to Medellin the next morning. And that’s when my time with my host family and language immersion course begun!

And then there was Spanish school

For just one week, I packed in a lot! And it was amazing and hard and so good for my brain and heart (and leg too).

I spent Saturday to Saturday morning in Medellin. I was there for a Spanish immersion language course and I was to stay with a family for seven days and six nights while taking classes, Monday to Friday mornings, and enjoying a Colombian cultural experience in the afternoons. My host mother is Gloria and a lovely retired lady in her 60s who lives alone in a big apartment with a gorgeous view.

I stayed with Gloria for two nights and ended up moving to a hotel just a couple minutes walk from the school. While she was a lovely lady, it was hard to sleep in her house – the bed was very very hard, and it was a hot room without a fan (or ac), and too many mosquitoes to open the window. I still ended up spending evenings with her and she made me dinner. She also took me shopping to an artisanal market and a fruit market, read my astrological chart and gave me natural medicine advice for all of my ailments.

A day trip to Guatapé y Penol

On Sunday before my week of school, I decided to take a day trip bus tour to Guatapé y Penol, a nearby landmark mountain surrounded by two cute villages and on a man-made lake.

It was a full day bus tour that started at 7 am and ended at 8 pm. I was with about 20 other people from Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru (and a few Colombians) and the entire tour was in rapid fire Spanish, which really challenged me but I also enjoyed!

The mountain between Guatapé and Penol is a strange jutting rock with a big staircase of 750 steps to the top. I’m still healing from my leg injury of last year and only made it up to the halfway point before my legs felt wobbly and tired so I turned around and went back down.

The rest of the tour included stops for breakfast and lunch, a boat ride and a petting zoo for llamas and sheep and ponies. The boat ride took us into the man-made lake where the tour guide spoke very quickly about Pablo Escobar‘s house that was now abandoned. He also talked about the tropical animals and plants that the drug lord brought in to his holiday home here, where he essentially built himself a ecological, nightmare, and tropical zoo. I was told that there are still hippos in that lake that he introduced and they terrorize and even kill people sometimes. I didn’t see any of that myself. It was a long day, but I was grateful for this tour and experience.

Spanish language school was both fun and exhausting

During the week, my morning of school was in a small class of 3 students taught by a wonderful young teacher named Ana Maria. The classes were hard, completely in Spanish, but also really interesting as we shared stories of our different cultures and learned a lot of wonderful things about Colombia. My favorite cultural lesson was about Patasola, a wild, one legged woman who lives in the forest and murders men who pollute and destroy nature. It was funny but also kind of brought me back to my own one-legged journey last year with my broken leg. I certainly didn’t kill any men who polluted the lands, but I genuinely appreciated the sentiment behind her efforts.

And in the afternoon, Robinson, another Colombian, teacher took me and another student (Melissa, who quickly became my friend) on excursions in the city to experience Colombian life in Medellin while giving Spanish language lessons. It was also really fun to learn some street language! We got to explore art parks, markets, metros, and museums, and even ate lunch at a buffet of different traditional Colombian foods.

I will 100% go back!

My overall impression of Colombia is that it’s amazing! It’s a beautiful country with warm, lovely and kind people. The people are also very inventive and hard-working and thirsty for work. Everything is cheap so I felt so rich. And the fresh fruit was absolutely to die for! I think if I lived in Colombia, I would eat fresh fruit for every meal or drink fresh juice for every meal. I loved trying new fruits every day and there are at least a hundred more that I haven’t tried yet.

Oh but the noise

The hardest part of being in Medellín was the noise – there was a constant smattering of cars, horns, loud music of different types, people talking animatedly, and construction. At all hours! And that you could hear at all times in every room and every place, everywhere. At my hotel I was awoken repeatedly by jackhammering through the night and as late as 3 am! Even the ear plugs provided by the hotel couldn’t block out the sound. I want to add that even in the country, in the Cocora Valley, where there weren’t many cars or people and little construction, it was still very noisy with constant crashing water from the cascades and hot springs, and crickets and birds and frogs chirping at all times of day and night. But it was a small price to pay for the amazingness that Colombia offers. I really honestly cannot wait to go back!

And now I am back in Florida with a bit of post-travel blues and also my ears ringing, from both a minor sinus/ear infection and the strange thickness of silence. It’s both comforting and lonely at the same time. One of the best things about Colombia may just be how warm, accepting, and kind everyone is. It’s a really community-centered culture and I feel certain that it’s one of the key factors to their happiness and survival over the years.