Jared and I picked up the car Monday afternoon. It was a bit confusing to find our way around the huge port lots, but after a bit of waiting, a man escorted me in his truck to the lot where RORO car are kept, and we were able to finalize our documents. Unfortunately, the car had been ransacked; everything that had been in an cubby hole was all over the seats and floor of the car. The made it out with Jared´s utility knife, a bunch of AAA batteries, and my debit card. All-in-all, the damage was not too bad though. We headed back to our hostel, Hostel Marlin, and finalized packing and mapping out our route to Medellin.
Tuesday morning, Jared and I woke up at 4 am, to go pick up the car from the lot where we had parked for the night; we were out the door at 5:30 am. The drive was pretty eventless, however, at one point we encountered a long line of huge trucks just stopped in a on the highway, border-style. As we have discovered from crossing borders, the rule of thumbs is to just bypass the entire line. When we arrived at the head of the line, a Colombian man in a military uniform informed us that there were riots in a town about 50 kilometers up, and the line was a caravan being formed to drive safely together with a police escort; the caravan would be leaving in 3 hours. As we pulled over and debated what to do, the same officer said he had called his chief and informed him that a car of foreigners was trying to pass and that we could drive ahead and meet up with the chief for a personal escort; he also found another small passenger vehicle that wanted to join, so we would have a caravan of 3 total. As we proceeded down the highway, we did in fact see many military personnel, but never got our police escort. We also never ran into anything that appeared to be a riot or even a group of people congregating in any town. The only mischief was perhaps all the trees that looked as though they´d been chopped down on the side of the road (looked my like landscaping to me), and the pipes that were open and spewing water all along the next 60 kilometers. We finally arrived after about 12.5 hours in Medellin and found our hostel, Lleras Park Hostel, easily. That night, we grabbed a relatively cheap dinner of fast food Mexican, and went to sleep early.
Yesterday morning, we woke up and planned our whole day to squeeze in all that Medellin has to offer. We planned on taking the metro to the cable car, and ascending to Parque Arvi, grabbing free bikes and getting some good shots of the city and the park. Then we were going to head back to the University district for some great parks and architecture, finished off by the center of town as the most tourist condensed area. We grabbed our maps and cameras and headed to the metro, which is actually really clean and easy to maneuver. The cable car ride took about 20 minutes up to the park. As we had been informed, they did provide free bikes for up to 3 hours, so we headed off to one end of the park to see a laguna and the mirador of the city. At the end, we were informed that we had to leave our bike and walk the last 10 minutes to the look-out. About 5 minutes into our walk, 2 men came running out of the trees to our right. At first, we only saw 1 guy, and based on the look on his face, I thought he was playing around, Jared thought he was going to try to sell us something. We both noticed there was nothing in his hands. Then we saw the second man run out about 3 feets behind him, which is when my heart dropped. The first guy jumped in front of Jared and drew a knife as he pushed Jared back, the second guy immediately came infront of me, also wielding a knife. Jared´s assailant was much more aggressive and constantly hacking at Jared´s upper body with the knife. I kept trying to keep that guy from swinging the knife, while my guy kept trying to keep me from him. The only thoughts running through my mind, were that Jared was definitely going to get stabbed, and that I had pepper spray, but wasn´t sure I should take that chance of getting it out; I had no idea if it even worked or how to get the safety latch off, as I´d never really tested it. They forced Jared to hand over his camera bag full of both his water proof and regular camera, and all his lenses (a total of about $1500.00) and his iphone 5, and my wallet. As they ran back into the woods, we were both hit by what had just happened. Jared was beside himself, while I was terrified they would come back and just wanted to get the hell off the mountain.
When we reached the location where our bikes were held, we informed the attendant who called a police officer up to us. We led the officer back to where we had been robbed, he looked around in the woods, took our information, and told us we should have used a guide. Several hours later, the woman that runs our hostel called the park outraged, and discovered that the officer that took our information, had basically just trashed it, and had not reported the robbery to anyone.
When we got back to the hostel, we spent the next hour or so doing damage control for his phone and my wallet. We are pretty handicapped now, as we have no mapping system, and good maps are impossible to find, and I have no way of accessing money. Together though, I think we can make things work until we get some of our items back. The rest of the night was filled with feelings of anger and regret.
It was a good lesson though, and something we realized should have been discussed as a precaution sometime at the beginning of the trip. As Jared and I recounted our feelings to one another, we realized we were on different pages. I was terrified he was going to get stabbed; he said he at no point thought he would get stabbed, but thought I would, as I kept getting infront of the guy swinging the knife at him, in an attempt to diffuse the threat Jared posed to them. He also had no idea I had my mace or was thinking of whether I should use it. In the future, we at least now are a bit more prepared in terms of knowing how the other thinks in a situation like that. It is entirely possible, this will not be our last time in this situation.
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