favorites::

1- our hostal and all the great people we met in it

2- going to an underground salsa bar. the kind of place that has no sign on the door, and you would think was just a random abandoned building…until you go inside and suprise….salsa bar!

3- people from medellin officially have the prettiest eyes of all of colombia. i kept seeing deep greens, blues, hazel everywhere i went.

4- the cute 70 yr. old man at the salsa bar that was hands down the best dancer i have ever seen. (and he knew it :-) )

5- the bustling city…reminded me of a small manhatten….

6- finally getting to take a break from the extreme heat and relax a bit in the “city of eternal spring”

7- going on a tour bus completely in spanish….where the  tour lady spoke so freakin fast neither of us had any idea what she was saying….more on that later….

8- watching the World Cup in south america was a completely different experience…the bars were packed with people hours before the game!  thankfully we managed to find a small bar that no one had discovered yet!

8- oh you know….paragliding over the entire city of medellin. yeah, that was cool ;-)

so we left the carribean coast and headed for the mountains for our last days in colombia. medellin was like being in an entirely different country. it’s a trendy city whose nickname is “the city of eternal spring” this is because the weather there is perfect and constant year round. it’s nearness to the equator makes it warm with a slight breeze and really just fantastic weather to walk the city around in.  go up the mountains some and you find miles and miles of cows, horses, huge farms, cowboy hats, and paragliding!

but first…Casa de Sol….

such a fun place to stay, and made me miss my days at VCU were art like this surrounded you everywhere….

1- belgium friends 2- australian friends 3- australian and scotland with wisconsin :) 

more obleas! only this time filled with mora….similar to blackberry….

shaved mango….topped with condensed milk, cinnamon, honey…..and sprinkles! any fruit topped with sprinkles gets a thumbs up in my book.

this was a very important church in medellin that we learned about in our tour. like i mentioned, the tour was in spanish and the lady spoke freakishly fast. so we both concluded that the tour lady said this church is famous because it is the biggest church made out of rice and corn.

what? it makes TOTAL sense….

p.s. paragliding is amazing :)

i took this shot while in the air :)

1- everything

2- the old wooden boats that completely cover the ocean

3- how it’s a beatiful beach…surrounded by even more beautiful mountains

4- the little old man with twinkly eyes who sold me my bracelets and when i told him i was colombian he gave me the biggest hug and said “welcome to your country”

5- sunset.

6- scuba diving for the first time. trying not to panic. and then becoming addicted.

taganga is a little hidden gem town right outside of santa marta. i had no idea what to expect when arriving, but as the taxi turned the corners of the mountain side, i was awestruck by it’s beauty. it has a quaint, small town feel…with a complete laid-back, beach bum attitude. it’s also the place were i would like to build a small house on the side of a mountain and live forever. scuba dive during the day, eat fresh fish for lunch, coco limeades for happy hour, and sit on the beach and watch sunset at night. repeat for 365 days and that sounds like a pretty sweet life if you ask me!

la chiva!! this is colombian’s famous bus. they are used as public transport and now are used more as ”party busses” where at night they play loud music, dance rumba, and take shots of aguardiente while going from town to town :-)

coco limeade for kim. coco limeade with vodka  for astrid  :-)

scuba!! 

creepiest picture ever.

and perhaps my favorite part of the day.