It was our last morning at Alto Bonito in Salamina, and the sunshine was fierce. Martin showed off his cooking skills one final time, and my belly was full and happy as I enjoyed our views for the last few minutes.
We caught the little bus heading toward town where we booked bus tickets to get to La Pintada. We knew nothing about La Pintada other than that we could supposedly get to Jardin from there.
The bus ride had great views of the mountains the whole way, but it was also hot with way too many stops. We were a whole 10 minutes from La Pintada when they made one more stop for everyone to eat lunch.
After arriving, we started asking around for how to get to Jardin. The consensus seemed to be that we should get a bus heading to Bolombolo, and from there, we’ll get a Jardin-bound bus. So we finally agreed and waited an hour for that bus to take off.
The route was full of construction so now we had dust blowing in through the windows to stick to our sweaty skin. But the driver was fast and soon enough, we were hopping off at La Peñalisa to await our final bus. Anthony tried to leave his wallet on the bus, but a good Samaritan alerted me to it before I climbed off.
Luckily, we only had to wait 5 minutes before we were able to flag down a Rapido Ochoa bus that said Jardin on the windshield. And that bus had air conditioning! Have I said “bus” too many times yet?
At last, we made it to Jardin around 6 pm. The main plaza was filled with people eating fresh fruit from food stalls, children dancing and laughing, men sitting outside bars drinking some beers, other sitting in bars watching the soccer game. Still more were just leaving the big beautiful Church.
We checked into our hotel which directly overlooked all this action.
After freshening up, we walked around to see the town and had a pleasant dinner at Café Europa. After walking around a little longer, we decided to enjoy the action from our balcony for the evening.
We heard people outside partying until early morning, and soon after that stopped, the locals were outside sweeping, and the Church bells were ringing.
We got an early start and sat outside a café drinking our coffee. When walking around the square, a yellow pup came sprinting up to us and started biting Anthony’s legs. I thought it was hilarious, but he wasn’t so sure the pup was being friendly and couldn’t get her to stop. We walked back into our hotel with her attacking our legs the whole time. She knew not to come inside but just looked at us sadly, like we were her only friends and we had abandoned her. Once we came back outside, she followed us around, much more politely now. She became my puppy for the remainder of our time there.
After eating some breakfast, we changed to go on a hike. There are tons of tours and activities around Jardin, probably the most popular of which is the horseback riding tour to the waterfall that falls through a cave. I had wanted to do that, but we decided we weren’t going to have enough time, so instead, we did a decently long hike on a path going outside of town, looping around and coming back through a different part of town. We walked through banana trees, yucca plants, and flowers galore. We visited horses, and the world’s cutest pup visited us, running up to us whimpering for attention.
We took a slight detour and caught some incredible views of Jardin.
We came across a river and crossed the bridge over it.
We saw a waterfall through some dense trees, but there was a locked gate to get to it. After some wandering around, we found a house that provided tours to the waterfall, but first they led us through a long cave full of hundreds of bats.
We came out the other side and climbed up to the waterfall. The spray felt refreshing after our long morning of hiking uphill in the sun.
We continued our walk, coming across another waterfall on the way, this one the waterfall of love. Apparently, it guarantees that your love will last forever if you kiss in front of it. So we were sure to lock that down.
We found a little cobblestone foot path short cut the rest of the way back into town, and then we walked the streets until we found somewhere that looked good for lunch.
Next up was Medellin, so we caught a bus for the 3-3.5 hour journey. It was honestly one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever been on, gorgeous mountain and river views from both sides of the bus the whole way.
Unfortunately, I was a bit carsick from all the bumps and lurches, but we survived, experiencing urban life in Colombia for the first time, and what a change of pace it was. We grabbed an Uber to our apartment in the El Poblado neighborhood. Jaw dropped as soon as we walked in and saw our views.
We weren’t sure we even wanted to leave, but it was our only night in the city so we went out and grabbed some dinner around Parque Lleras.
We decided to check out one more place for drinks and ordered some fancy cocktails.
I was dead tired, so we decided to relax back at our balcony for the rest of the night, the evening views every bit as spectacular.
