The Jardin at the end of the world

This weekend was a long weekend in Colombia ("puente" as they call them here), with Monday being a holiday because of San Jose - what this San Jose did, I can't be sure of, since there are so many Catholic saints with their own holidays it's hard to keep track, even after 2 years living here. Colombians themselves won't be able to tell you what the holiday is for. But seeing as I still hadn't taken advantage of any of the 15-something puentes that we get in Colombia every year, I decided I better start with the pueblos, or little towns, outside of Medellin, still within the state of Antioquia. So Giovanni and I headed off Saturday morning to Jardin, a small pueblo of 14,000 people to the south-west of Medellin. What should have been a 3-hour journey took us 5 hours by bus, with a more than hour-long traffic jam just getting out of Medellin and past the next town. Then after it got dark (we left at 4 p.m.) we met another line of cars on the highway wrapped around the mountains. But it was nice to get away, even if it was just for 2 nights.

Jardin was nice, similar to mostly all pueblos you find around Colombia, or any other Latin American country for that matter (not trying to steroetype here, promise!). But really, the impossibly tall mountains reminded me of the country's most touristy coffee town Salento, the windy roads lined with plantain and coffee crops could have been mistaken for Costa Rican highways, and the town center and church, with its typical all-reigning presence, basically combined my thoughts of Santa Fe de Antioquia, Cartagena, and Guatape, Colombia. And like all typical Colombian towns, there wasn't a hell of a lot to do. We could tell most people were from Medellin, with their 50-person families, and finca (country-home/farm) attire, and kids kept coming up to us asking if we were from there ("yes, and her most of all," Giovanni would respond).

At the top of the mountain during our hike

We enjoyed a relaxed, if not lazy two days in the southern-most town in Antioquia. Both mornings consisted of walking around the plaza center, looking for a good "tinto" (black coffee), breakfast, and checking out who was still drunk from the night before. Because we were out in nature and I really was getting high off of the natural air, on Sunday Giovanni and I wandered out of the center and hiked up cow-prodded land, to reach a peak filled with coffee and plantain plants. The view was spectacular, with the center of Jardin laying below us and making us wonder how and WHY the heck did anyone ever think to build such a random if not insignificant town smack dab in the middle of these mountains. After that we took in some more exhilarating fresh air with some frisbee playing, filmed some boys doing tricks in the makeshift bike park, and went back to town to do what we do best on vacation, eat and people-watch.

My trout dinner, with a baked rainbow trout with veggies, plantain, arepa, french fries, and pickled salad.

Gio wasn't full after his trout dinner, he asked for another portion of "patacon" (plantain)

Luckily the bus ride back was smooth sailing, and we got back home around lunch time. We came back with some local strawberry jam, wine made from coffee beans, 20 bug bites (just me) and a pair of beaded earrings (just me again). It was all good fun, now back to worky work, since it's not a holiday for anyone else