Day 79

Day 79 1/13/2022

I had a busy day coming up. I took a 2 mile walk to a breakfast spot I found and stuffed my face with some good food. I went back to the hostel, grabbed my laundry to drop it off and brought a shirt to get repaired. I was getting a bit sleepy so I went back to my hostel to try to nap for 90 minutes before my 2 hour salsa lesson. The anxiety was kicking in really hard but I tried to ignore it. I slept maybe 5 minutes and then rushed off to the salsa class. On my way there BMW texted me and said my bike would be ready by 4Pm and it was going to be $350. $100 cheaper than what they said it would cost. Well that’s lovely since that never ever happens. I asked why it was cheaper and Carlos said because not all the parts were broken in the ABS pump they just replaced some seals and a bearing. There was a lot of dust in it and that’s why it broke. I’m thrilled to hear that.

I showed up to salsa after doing my Chilean vaccine stuff on their website just in case I make the trip. Once I was done sweating from the walk and the vaccine stuff I started salsa. I had a different girl this time and she was teaching me a lot of footwork which was interesting. Completely different from what I was learning the other day but I guess it’s good to switch it up. After about an hour she started to dance with me like the first girl did. She told me to show her my moves that I learned and I worked on them with her for a bit, then she showed me a few different ones that we worked on for the rest of the class. I was exhausted and called it a day 10 minutes early. I can’t believe I’m actually doing salsa and I’m doing it pretty well. It’s a nice feeling knowing I can go into a salsa club and actually throw some moves down.

After salsa I took a long 30 minute walk to the BMW dealer. I talked to the mechanics for a while and bullshitted about the trip, the bike and the rest of my trip. Carlos is looking into having someone talk to DIAN which is the Colombian customs office in Medellin. He’s going to try to help me extend my motorcycle visa which is so sweet of him. The mechanics found some missing bolts on my bike and replaced them. They also fixed my crash bars on my bike since the screws were all rusty and I couldn’t barely tighten them. I got on the bike and made plans with a Ukrainian gypsy girl named Anastasia I met the day before to go out to Comuna 13. I rushed home and took a shower while she went to a bike shop on the corner of my hostel to rent a helmet with no luck.

We jumped on my bike to go look for a few more bike rental shops that might be open but not one of those places were where google said they were. We stopped for some burgers after we gave up looking for the helmet. Some guy clipped my bike in traffic and knocked my bike over into another car 2 minute after she jumped on. Great, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing on a bike to this girl! Haha. She’s Ukrainian, they’re all crazy though. She’s going to slap me when she reads this.

We went back to my hostel to get an uber and this girl walks across the street to someone’s house and knocks on their door asking them if she can rent their personal helmet. I was cracking up. I couldn’t believe it. She really wanted to go rip around on the bike! The guy comes outside and walks us over to the bike shop that was closed but we kept telling him it was closed., Once we got up in front of it they were open! She begged the guys to rent a helmet and they finally gave in and it was free of charge.

We got on the bike and rode 15 minutes up to Comuna 13. It’s an old part of the city which used to be the most dangerous part. Now it’s all touristy and full of hipsters. The reason it’s such a hip place now is because there’s beautiful graffiti everywhere all over the city there. They do huge tours showing all the graffiti and the history of that part of the city. We walked down 239813473 steps to get to the main part where you can walk. We walked around for a bit and had a lovely panoramic view of the city where we took tons of pictures. There was a spot with 6-7 escalators bringing you down the rest of the way to the bottom of the city there. We walked around a bit and took the escalators back up. We found the stairwell which we came down from where I parked my bike and the gypsy was leading the way but she made a few wrong turns so we were sweating climbing up and down the stairs.

We finally got to my bike all sweaty and wet. She mentioned there was another viewpoint back towards our area so we hopped on the bike and rode over there. It was drizzling a bit. We got to the other view point and parked the bike. It was about a 15 minute walk up to the top and the view there was beautiful as well but it may have been nicer from Comuna. We chatted for a while up there while the rain picked up a bit and about 45 minutes later it was raining pretty hard. We took my bike back to my hostel and went out for some drinks and food. It’s so much fun hanging out with Anastasia. We have so much to talk about there’s never any silence. I talked her into coming to Crossfit with me tomorrow since she’s a pretty active girl. She’s going to do really well I think. The rain picked up really hard and it was down pouring so hard the whole time we were eating dinner. We each had two mojitos and after hours of chatting she called an uber home and I made my short walk back to the hostel. I threw my bike in a parking garage and went to bed!

My gypsy friend

Medellin from Comuna 13

I even got a free bike wash from BMW!

Another view

You can guess where I worked out

So clean!