We woke up a bit later and headed down to breakfast. We were seated at a table where a monstera plant hung down and looked like a cool green wig on my head. I ordered eggs with homemade english muffins and Jives got the potato onion omelette with toast that came covered in a tomato paste. 

We then set out to the botanical gardens near Universite station. The views from the metro were really lovely. It’s nice when a metro is above ground. The botanical garden was only a few minutes walk from the station, and completely free to enter. It was just what we needed, a slow relaxing walk after a sick day the day before. The park wasn’t giant, but it was a lovely escape from the city.

We saw two large iguanas and many turtles, as well as ducks that wanted to fight Jives as he filmed a rap take. It was easy to have large spaces to ourselves and convenient to have sooo many benches to stop at. My favourite part was the jungle walk on a wooden plankway through the most forested area of the park. Also, we saw some fish that only seemed to swim on their sides in very shallow water… or they were just really bad at being fish, hard to tell. 

Next we headed to Acevedo station to take the cable car to Arvi, a natural park with lots of hiking trails, up the eastern hills of Medellin. The problem was.. We took the cable car to El Progresso up the western hills, and arguably the much less safe hills. We got on the cable car with two men. The older man was trying very hard to talk to Jives to express that we were on the wrong cable car. I soon realized that we were on the wrong car as the first metro stop did not line up with my map. We passed over an area where people were raising livestock and some very interesting looking neighbourhoods that looked like Comuna 13 but a bit rougher. The gentleman trying to speak to Jives was really nice, he told us how many stops were left and not to climb a certain hill. We got off at the second stop and crossed under the station to head back down to Acevedo station. 

Back at the station we headed back down to the metro platform where we headed right/ north to the exit this time. If you go up the stairs on the right and hug the wall, you can take the cable car “K” Acevedo to Santa Domingo on the same metro tap. We had not once left the metro since entering the station at the Botanical Gardens, so we were still on the same tap all the way to Santa Domingo. At Santa Domingo you need to transfer to the “L” line Santo Domingo- Arvi to go to Arvi. The price here for tourists is 13,700 each way. We had ridden so many cable cars at this point because of our mistake, so we opted not to pay the almost 80,000 to ride the car even further (only to have to come back down, as you cannot hike around the top at Arvi without a guide anymore). 

We took the cable car back to Acevedo and then headed back to our hotel to rest and have some dinner. Once again we took the #1133iiA bus up the hill to save our little legs from the crazy hike. We sat outside on the front deck at our hotel, which was lovely, surrounded by rosemary plants. We both ordered a grapefruit and blueberry mimosa and I got a fish hot dog covered in sauerkraut and jalapenos with roasted potatoes on the side. Potatoes in Colombia are utterly amazing! Potatoes are my favourite food, so I fancy myself a connoisseur. Jives ordered a pastrami sandwich which also came with roasted potatoes. It was a lovely setting and we sat outside the restaurant as the sun set, heading back to our room after. 

We did manage to go for a swim later on before falling asleep.