And, we are back!
No excuses for not posting for awhile, guess we are just busy. Doing what, who knows.
We took a little trip over the back fence to Medellin Colombia and some surrounding areas. What a beautiful city of almost 2.5 million residents. We could see why folks here are considering relocating there. Great restaurants, warmer weather, extremely friendly and helpful citizens. Way over the top graciousness and kindness. Lovely grand old trees, lots of flowers, too.
Unfortunately our camera didnt want to cooperate much, but we did get some shots to share of fun street art, which we have added to this post.
We took a tour to several sites telling the story of the recent history of the city being the drug capital of the world. Violent times then. Today, 10 years later, what a difference! A real concerted effort by the locals to put all that behind them, and improve the lives of the folks...new, modern construction, huge new shopping malls, fabulous street art adding joy and color to the barrios, vibrant businesses and so much more. So many choices in the supermarkets and malls!
Of course, in a city this large, there are pockets of poverty and assorted crime, but that is just normal for a city this big. Locals told us that it is all getting better. One interesting note: We stayed in a pretty touristy hotel and neighborhood, so we felt relatively safe, with lots of police presence... Our area was a center of loud music and clubs, with crowds of young travelers and locals. Party hardy til 7 am! But, we liked the music and we were fine. Our hotel room was quiet enough for sleep, despite facing the wild and crazy nightlife.
Travel for us old folks is never easy...we suffered the usual long lines, delayed flights and bad attitudes in the airports...guess that is just normal now. A good choice we did make for coming and going was to break up the travel by staying a night or 2 in Quito on the way... always fun to be in Quito.
As we are going through our broken camera to see what else we can salvage, we will post more pics of our adventures in Cuenca so stay tuned.
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