The Road to Medellin...

... from our overnight stop in Caucasia was certainly an interesting one. The one major road, aka the Pan American highway, was over 285 kms (and taking 6 1/2 hours) of winding, twisty roads, riddled with potholes and heaves/dips (thanks to earthquakes/landslips) but very scenic once we got into the foothills and mountains. All main highways here are toll roads, which we found out later as couldn't work out why we had to pay for roads in such bad condition. We saw a number of men with shovels pretending to fill in potholes and wanting payment from passersby. We saw that scam in Mexico so not falling for it here, especially as we spotted them sitting on the side of the road and only getting up when they saw cars coming. Good luck to them. We also saw many of the locals making the most of the natural resources by setting up car and truck washes, channelling the abundant flow of rainwater cascading down onto the main road.

Once in Medellin, we walked miles and were rather footsore by the end of day one. It was good to get out of the car and get the legs working, even if they did protest a bit.

The view of the city from Pueblito Paisa at the top of Parque Cero Nutibara

Another church we passed

 Palace of Culture - do not adjust your vertical hold

some of the artwork around the plaza

Parque de Las Luces (park of lights - over 300 light posts and 2,100 reflectors)

From Medellin we had a day trip to Guatape on the lake, a reservoir created for a hydro-electric dam, built in the late 1960s. It's a very pretty and colourful town

The Peñol rock borders the lake and formed over 70 million years ago and is easily visible from the road. At over 200m high with 650 steps, we had planned to climb to the top but couldn't see how to get to it until much later on our drive back from the town. By this time, we'd already had lunch and still had a long drive back to Medellin in rush hour traffic. I know, any excuse. 

We are now in the colourful Andean mountain town of Jardin and at 1,780m.

It's quite cool up here and I will be wearing trousers, boots and a fleece to venture out to dinner!

Tomorrow we head to Manizales in the heart of coffee growing region