Bus ride to Medellin

(Still on the bus) At one point, I heard the bus stop for a bathroom break and when I took off my eyemask, I was surprised to see that it was 8:30am. Trying to use my legs to walk proved to be a challenge as they had been in an awkward position all night and my knee was killing me. We hung out at a truck stop for about 45 minutes, while people grabbed breakfast, so Alyssa and I grabbed some coffee. The Colombians eat breaded, deep fried meat for breakfast, so we always opt out of the local fare. Then it was back on the bus for another few hours of driving.
When we arrived, we stopped at the tourism kiosk to get maps and directions. They were very helpful and we were happy and surprised to see that they had a great metro system that we could take right to the part of town we needed to go to. It is hands down the cleanest, most well maintained metro I've ever been on. We got off in Poblado and walked down to the area of town with all of the hostels. Medellin was nothing like what I expected. The town is beautiful and very clean and the hostels are in a residential neighborhood which is a first. We were clearly very safe here.

As we walked, we realized that we were on a street that had been blocked off for the Medellin marathon, so we could cheer on the runners as we made our way down the street. We stopped first at Black Sheep hostel but unfortunately they were sold out of private rooms. Luckily, they called over to Pit Stop hostel and found that they did have availability, so we walked over there. We had been hesitant to go to Pit Stop because it had been classified as a party hostel/frat house online, but we had been walking with our heavy bags for a while and decided to give it a shot. They did have a private room available for $60,000 pesos which was reasonable so we agreed to wait for the room to be cleaned and checked our bags into storage. We hadn't eaten anything yet, so we attempted to walk to Zona Rosa, which is a part of town with all of the bars and restaurants. We had a few wrong turns but finally made it to the right area. Unfortunately since it was Sunday absolutely nothing was open. After trudging around for over an hour, we finally just ate at Subway (which was delicious because I was starving). We walked back to the hostel and were able to check into our room and unpack our things. It was only then that Alyssa realized her sweatshirt had been stolen either before or at the Subway (we're not entirely sure where/how it happened). It was luckily a cheap sweatshirt but annoying none the less as it was the only the she owned with a hood. It was a good lesson that we need to keep a sharper eye on things though.
We took a tour of the hostel which included a pool, basketball court, ping ping table and bar. We noticed that we were pretty much the only women staying there (definitely fit the frat party description). There was a group of 7 guys from New York (half of which were actually Irish but living in New York) who were in Medellin for a boys weekend. We went to the happy hour at the hostel bar from 7-8pm and became fast friends with them. At the bar, we had many drinks (some of them free- thanks New York boys!) including the shots of aguardiente that the bartender kept sending over for free (tastes like black licorice).

The group decided to all go out to dinner together and then hopefully out for drinks. Once again, our search for an open restaurant was futile and we ended up at a Mexican food restaurant as their only patrons. None of the boys we were with spoke Spanish so Alyssa and I assisted with translation.

After dinner, we were on a quest to find a bar. Alyssa and I never go out drinking so I thought this was a great opportunity with a posse of boys to protect us. Unfortunately, there were absolutely no bars open so we ended up at a different hostel drinking at their bar. They were pretty stuck up and kicked us out after one drink (their bar was closing anyways).

The boys were adamant about finding another bar (and buying coke and weed) so Alyssa and I decided to head home on our own. It was about a 20 minute walk back to the hostel but since it was 1:00am, we weren't sure how safe the two of us were. At one point we were walking by a shopping center and two men started whistling at us, so we decided to run a while (hilarious in retrospect but scary at the time). Once we got closer to our hostel, we felt safer and continued walking. We got back safe and sound although it was a complete bust of a night.

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