Denouement Dashboard - Colombia 🇨🇴

This is the place I will cover the stats of each country as we go.

As usual, follow along at:

Anyway, let's get into it:

Colombia: 15-21/5/23

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as tracks IN that country.

Planes:

Automobiles:

Boats:

Walking:

Total = 1,515.6 km

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as an expense IN that country.

Total expense: $1941.98 AUD

Total Days: 7 Days inclusive

Expense per day = $277.43 AUD/Day

Expenses Breakdown (mathematical, not emotional):

Lots of 'Influencers' in Colombia. Among young women, image is everything.

'The Americans' are starting to appear as we head north. We spotted a pack of them floating around the airport after some sort of bro-ish holiday...

The coffee in Colombia is excellent
There is a decent restaurant scene in Laureles - we had Mexican, Argentinian, Japanese, Vietnamese
Cafes will serve from extensive breakfast and snack menus
And we are starting to see some more Americanised chain restaurants as well

'Rappi' or 'Pedidos Ya' for food delivery - download the apps
Ubers are cheap and everywhere - traffic can be very bad, however
As with most of South America - not a lot of English
Colombia is not a Narco hotspot any more - as usual, avoid the Narco economy and you won't have any trouble
Pick a good suburb as your base - heaps of blogs out there to help with this - Laureles and El Poblado are good starts
Because the borders between rich and poor are frequent and drastic - you can pass through good-bad-good-bad suburbs on a simple trip to the movies
Some cultural differences - change an order at a restaurant and you might get an eye roll (probably nothing in it, though); image is everything; social media is a bit of an obsession (maybe even more than the west) such that young women will sneer and eye roll at each other, oneupsmanship is a thing

Larueles is a very nice suburb adjacent to a University with heaps of Restaurants and Cafes - very safe
As was El Poblado - very upmarket with lots of restaurants, high end shopping, cafes
Go out to Guatape and climb up the massive rock thing - it is very cool
Definitely go to Communa 13 for a walking tour - we went with 'Visit Medellin Tours' (just google them and book on Viator)
The Botanic Gardens in Medellin city is quite nice - free entry and full of animals freely roaming
Otherwise Medellin is a very green city, and walking the streets is mostly very pleasant

I've called this a summary, but we only went to Medellin - so grain of salt here
Colombia was definitely cheaper due to much cheaper accomodation and we avoided the very expensive day tours
We probably stayed a little too long at 7 days; 5 days would be enough for the casual tourist having a look around
Wealth inequalities, as with the rest of South America, are obvious; but we felt very safe
The food is pretty good
And the coffee is excellent

Thanks for reading along.

The next country update will come... after the next country.

Weekly updates will come...weekly.

Luke.