After our first night of going to a club, Michael did not wake up
very easily the next morning. When
I woke up, I felt fine and even worked on my Spanish homework. I was ready to head to class without
him, but he bravely dressed and walked to school.
The first half of class was excruciating for Michael, and he
barely participated. Once
break-time hit, he whispered to me that he was just going to return to the room
and sleep it off instead of attempting to hold his attention while fighting off
his hangover. I
successfully conjugated the verbs, "to return" (volver), "to
sleep" (dormir) and "to drink" (beber) in the past tense when I told our
teacher and our classmates that Michael had to return to our hostel to sleep
because he had had too much to drink the night before. Everyone nodded their head as if they
were all too familiar with his situation.
I tried to quietly enter our room when I returned after class, but
my presence woke him up. Much
to my surprise, he was very spritely! Powernaps
can do wonders - as can eating a greasy croissant filled with equally greasy
ham and cheese. He
suggested we attempt to ride the subway system and go shopping at the mall our
teacher John had highly recommended. Wearing my last clean shirt, I could
only say, "Let's go!"
Getting on the Train
Medellín is nestled in between 2 mountain ranges. Down the
center of the valley lies the metro whose main line runs north/south. A
few other lines run east/west, but only for a short while before they run into
the mountains. The Google Maps picture below illustrates Medellín's
topography as viewed from the south. The stars you see are places Michael
and I visited or hoped to visited in the barrio of El Poblado. The
rightmost star represents our gym. Our hostel is a few stars to the left
of it. The bottommost star, or rather the one closest to you, represents
the mall we were trying to reach. It seems like a hop, skip, and jump
away - and it was indeed supposed to be one subway train stop away - but
our journey to get to the Santafé Mall took much longer than we expected.
When asked how to get the Poblado metro station, the directions
are an easy, "Just go down Calle 10 and you'll run into it."
Our hostel is on that very same street so we just stepped out our door
and headed west towards the center of the valley. While we gawked at the
new buildings like typical tourists, we also noticed that Calle 10 has quite an
incline down to the station. It was easy to get to the metro, but I had
already decided that we were taking a cab to get back up to our hostel.
The closer we got to the Metro, the more vendors of knickknacks
& snacks we came across. Another phenomenon that emerged was the
tangle of freeways and bridges servicing the intersection of pedestrian and
vehicular traffic. A woman luckily took us under her wing and made sure
we followed her as she weaved through the streets, crosswalks, and bridges.
It was easy to remember her because I noticed she looked as if she were
dressed out of the 50s, complete with full, calf-length skirt and
moderately-high heels. She wasn't a rockabilly, she was just dressed
nicely for work or some social engagement or just because. Think "June Cleaver." This made me
notice that a lot of women were also wearing high heels. I commend for walking the poorly-maintained
and steep sidewalks of Calle 10 without tripping!
We finally saw the station atop a bridge that saddled a freeway,
tracks and a river. We passed a long
line and I hoped it was not one we would have to stand in. Many metro stations in the States have
automated ticket booths into which you deposit money or a credit card in the
amount needed to get to your desired station.
Not so in Colombia. One must
either have bought a thick, plastic card that you add currency in big chunks
(via what method I don't know) or buy a thin, paper ticket from a metro
employee in the station booths. We
indeed had to stand in that long line we had passed.
While in line, I nervously practiced my request for "2
tickets to Aguacatala." I had to spend an extra minute getting all
the syllables of A*gua*ca*ta*la right
because my tongue kept wanting to say, "water poopoo" with Aguacacalala. It turned out that I didn't need to practice
the station destination so much because every ticket to any station costs the
same at 2000 COP, which is equivalent to US 80¢. I was amazed. You can start at the northernmost station and end in the southernmost
and it would still cost you 80¢! The hardest part of the
transaction was understanding that the 2 tickets cost 4000 COP. It was still hard for us to understand
numbers spoken despite having learned them for so long.
The shortest line I've seen at a ticket booth. This was taken at El Centro. More on that later.
Once we got our tickets, we found ourselves in the midst of
another sea of latinos. This time,
however, there were different currents from different directions converging
towards one of 2 lines. I thought I
myself was a current straight from the ticket booth exit, but a few grouchy
women who looked as if they had been on their feet all day told me in Spanish that the end of the line was behind
them. Although this line was shorter
than the ticket booth line, we spent more time in it because of all the people
shoving and waddling to get to the turnstile as was their entitled due. We found this type of behavior - being entitled
to a 81 square inches of space first - was going to plague us for the rest of our
trip in Colombia in various forms.
Relieved to get to the turnstile, I realized I wasn't sure where
to put my ticket. I had not been able to
see where everyone put theirs because of the bodies standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, chest-to-back, blocking my view. From the corner of my eye, I saw a woman drop
something at the time of her turnstile next to me, so I followed suit much to
the dismay of the (armed?) guard monitoring the metropolitans. I had been standing in the wrong line the
whole time and had placed my paper ticket where the card holders insert their
plastic ticket to be read electronically!
The guard sighed heavily and motioned for a manager to come and unlock
the box to retrieve my ticket. Again I
had to stand in another line and shoulder wrestle with other passengers.
How do you say "bottleneck" in Spanish?
A slight difference between two entrances.
When Michael and I escaped the crowdsurfing, we found ourselves
with a new dilemma. In which direction
were we to head on the train? If we
wanted to go south, did we take the stairs on the right or the left? The left read, "Niquia" and the right
read "Itagui." This would be
no problem if we had a map of the metro system, because those two words were
most likely the last stops in the north or the south. Whichever station lie in the south was the we
wanted to board. But there was a
problem. The only map in the station was
on the other side of the turnstile. No,
not next to the ticket booth that lay inside the edifice. The closest map was on the other side of the
turnstile and outside the building! This
location does indeed help those tens of tourists who need an intro to the metro
system, but this same map could do wonders - miracles, I tell you - to dispel
the confusion for those who pass each step of the obstacle course that is the Colombia
public transportation.
Medellín Metro Map
Another piece of information that could have helped us on our
virgin voyage was the knowledge that there are express trains during rush
hour. We had only one stop to travel and
when we approached it, we continued to zip on pass it. Agua caca, indeed!
We didn't find out about this particular station-skipping schedule
until we had already walked past the exit gate and could not return. There were scant signs that indicated we were
at Ayurá, and not at Aguacatala. Spanish
looks like gibberish to a non-speaker until there's meaning to it or until one
finds it repeated elsewhere - like, say ... on a map! I looked up at the "Ayurá" on a
sign and saw it also on a map (yes, outside the building) and realized then
that Ayura was not a local way of saying, "go this way to exit the
building," but the universal method of telling you the name of the station
on which you set your tired feet. Gringa
estupida!
By this time we were experts at ordering tickets and knowing the
exact change needed to obtain them and which turnstile would accept said
tickets. We got back onto the correct train heading north back to the mall
we so wanted to visit so as to buy clothes which would allow us to avoid doing
laundry.
Gettng to the Mall
We exited the Aguacatala station and could not recognize anything
mall-y. Again we were greeted with a
tangle of roads and bridges. We followed
people heading in the general direction that the Santafé Mall lay and found twists,
ramps and stairs that were dotted with knick-knack shops, droguerías (CVS /
Rite-Aid for gringos), and bars patronized by 9-to-5ers who just couldn't bear
to board the train to go home nor leave the metro station's vicinity - also to
go home. But, looking at my watch and seeing that it was not yet 5pm, these people were either unemployed or were 8-to-4ers or they were the
shopkeepers one stall away who just needed a nighttime break at 5.
My MPS (Mall Positioning System) was obstructed by all this uphill walking.
Remember how we walked down Calle 10? Well, we had to hike up Calle 12S to get to
the street where Santafé Mall was. As
Max might have put it, it was "man-ass walking," which translates to
"big-ass hiking up San Francisco-like streets." Michael looked over at me at one point and
pointed out quite loudly how sweaty I was.
Yes, I was grossly gross, but I chalked it up to negative calorie points
that I could later fill with deliciously marinated steak. And it didn't matter that other people heard
because 1) Michael exclaimed it in the foreign language of English, and 2) one
look at me from any pair of eyeballs and you might have shouted the same
translation in any language/dialect.
Once we got to El Poblado, the street where the mall is located,
we still had to walk uphill to our destination.
On the way we came across an interesting site of a hillside
cemetery. People were praying among lit
candles and thousands of plaques commemorating deceased loved ones. It was equally eerie and beautiful.
A curious, populated site at the side of a major street
Placas descending the hillside
Benches for the mourners
Arrival At Last
When the words "Santafé" came into view, I was so excited
that we would soon be in consumer heaven.
My giddiness was short-lived when again I saw multiple sets of stairs
that I had to descend and ascend to reach the urban oasis.
On Michael's shopping list were jeans, shirts, a blazer, and the
elusive after-shave balm. On my list
were casual shirts and dresses, long skirts, and my own holy grail of
toiletries about which I've already exhaustively written. If you've forgotten what they were, don't
worry because I didn't find them. I did
find really affordable cotton tops and sexy shoes, the latter of which I didn't have the
balls to buy. Shoes that are high in the
heel look good on me until I start doing anything other than sitting around. My bunions are so advanced that even standing
adds too much to the gravitational force on my wide feet to warrant spending
even a mere $40 to look like hot stuff.
More like hot mess!
Michael found some jeans that were a great hue of dark blue and
made his butt look so svelte! The only
thing that worried me was how their cut of skinniness (i.e. the leg tapered
inward from the hip as it reached the ankle)
borderlined making him look as if he were more into boys than girls. But mentally surveying the men's fashion we
had seen in the past few days made us confident that, at least in Colombia, he
wouldn't be mistaken for being anything hipper than a heterosexual - not that
there's anything wrong with that!!!
Even though we didn't find our toiletries, we still felt
successful in having put off laundry for a few more days. We celebrated by eating at Santefé's rooftop
restaurants. Ok, it was just a food
court. But Colombians love their meat so
much that even in an ordinary location one can find excellent cuts of steak! We chose our food stand, not because of
outstanding reviews or excellent marketing, but because it was the last vendor
we examined as we went around the food court.
We had been walking continuously for 4 hours and we just wanted to sit
down. Luckily, we had ended up at Fogón
y Leña's and their food was delicious.
Even the arepa was slightly edible because they made it thin,
complemented it with a salty cheese, and served it hot off the grill.
Fish and mushrooms and cheeeeese!
The least inedible arepa blanca in Colombia
The outdoor rooftop dining at Santafé, open to the sky. (Complete with lusty teenagers)
The Return
Satisfied with our purchases and dinner, it was time to head back
home. But which method would we use -
public or private taxi? There have been
many warnings and equally as many assurances about foreigners' safety using
public taxis.
Multiple white plaques display the taxis plate number
Before setting foot in Colombia, I read about techniques to
make sure the taxi one used was legitimate and not a thief riding in a yellow
car. One method is to
not hail a taxi from the sidewalk. I did
this very thing all the time in Manhattan when I visited with my girlfriends and we never
had any problems. But this is South
America and the alternate to catching a cab from the streets is to call for one
from a central dispatching company. If
you are at a club, bar, or restaurant, you can ask the hostess or bartender to order a cab. You will be provided the
license plate of the taxi so that when one pulls up to claim to have been
called to pick you up, you can verify that it is indeed the cab that the
dispatcher sent to you. Another method
is to use UBER, a smartphone app that serves as an electronic dispatcher
between you and private taxis. What's a
private taxi, you ask. These are regular
citizens who want to earn money being a taxi, but who do it using their own
car. To work with Uber, their car or truck also has to be a
4-door and colored white.
Once we steeped our time in Colombia, we noticed lines of public
taxis waiting outside major commercial areas and outside metro stations. This is like hailing from the sidewalk,
right? Some lines
were managed by a human controller that stood near the first available
taxi. It didn't remove all doubts as to
the safety of using these public because the controller didn't really seem to
do anything special. Maybe he was there
to settle disputes. What did make me
feel better about using a public taxi was watching families with children, old
couples, young couples, and other gringos jumping into the taxis in line.
As we descended the 5 floors of Santafé, I tapped through the Uber to try to request a
taxi to our hostel. I previously thought
one could choose among a list of drivers and read their reviews before
accepting their service. While walking
out the mall, I was trying to see if our potential driver Guillermo's previous users liked him. What I didn't know is that no passengers have
access to reviews and I had inadvertently agreed to ride with him when I pressed a
button "Request Ride." I
thought I would still get a chance to confirm later on. What I didn't know is that I had 5 minutes to
cancel without being charged.
Uber's GPS showed its driver making all sorts of lefts, rights,
and U-turns in attempt to get to us that we were getting impatient with our first
attempt with the app. In real life, standing before us
was a petite, gray-haired, tan man in a public taxi waiting for someone to get
in his cab. Somewhere out there was
Guillermo who, despite his rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, didn't seem to know how
to get to such a popular place as the mall. We took a chance on the old man and on public
taxis in general.
Despite the old man's frail appearance, he zipped through Medellín
like an expert racecar driver. We got to
our hotel so quickly and safely that this singular event changed our minds
about hailing taxis from the streets. My
opinion now is that hailing taxis in the middle of the day at a high pedestrian
traffic area is ok. I still think that
hailing taxis alone, at night, and appearing intoxicated, from the street is a
no-no. But sober and amongst many
witnesses during the day is A-OK.
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