Party Time

Medellín, Colombia

La Piedra de Peñol is a giant rock 90 minutes outside of Medellín. It sits between a bunch of lagoons. Somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea to build 740 steps into the side of the rock so tourists could climb up it and take pictures.

The top of the rock when I arrived was crawling with tourists. There were a gift shop, some toilets, and several michelada vendors.

You find different varieties of michelada all over Latin America. The micheladas on La Piedra were beer with lime and chile plus chopped mango or papaya. I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I drank a mango michelada.

After the michelada, I snapped a few photos. Then I climbed back down.

At the bottom I ordered a bandejo paiso - which is a signature dish of Medellín featuring all the meats - as well as another michelada. While I was waiting for my meal I wrote a short uneventful entry in my journal.

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Guatapé is a colorful tourist town right next to La Piedra de Peñol. After climbing the rock I took a cab into town to see the sights.

The sights of Guatapé included brightly painted houses on stilts, brightly painted gift shops, and brightly painted restaurants. I walked around and took a couple pictures, which is I think what you're supposed to do.

I'm not much for buying trinkets, so instead I stopped in at one of the brightly colored restaurants and ordered a few micheladas.

It occurred to me in Guatapé that the reddit model of voting (+1/0/-1) would probably yield very different election results than the American "first past the pole" system, in which wildly unpopular candidates can win elections. So I made a Facebook post about that and spent some time in Guatapé watching a youtube video somebody suggested to me about different voting systems.

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The clubs in Medellín stay open till 4, 5, or 6 in the morning. I'm assuming this is because of all the cocaine. I went out with some folks from my hostel with an aim to follow the action to the end of the night.

The first bar was a dive with a small dance floor and a large ball pit. I sat on the edge of the ball pit and didn't really talk to anybody but did regularly toss balls around at anybody in the room. That was kind of fun.

I was out with 4 guys and 2 Swedish girls, and all 4 of the guys were trying desperately to get with the 2 girls. The owner of the hostel was one of the guys and seemed to have staked a pretty strong claim on the cuter girl, so most of the competition was for the less cute girl. I didn't like my chances and stayed out of the Swedish girl sweepstakes.

After the ball pit bar we relocated to a more clubby club where my companians could dance it out and decide who was going to sleep with whom. I pulled up a chair at a table and proceeded to spend the night drinking beers and texting with friends back in Minneapolis.

At one point a middle-aged woman sat down next to me and started giving me her A-game. She was there with her two young nieces, which seemed kind of gross. But I'd been drinking all day and wasn't really in a position to point fingers.

She was passionately shouting something or other in my ear, but the music was too loud and my Spanish comprehension was too lousy and I wasn't much feeling like trying to get with a middle-aged chaperone. So that episode faded away without much ado.

At 3am the club was still completely packed, but I was having a hard time staying awake. So I called an Uber and went home.