Chicha, chivas & "Chingao, I missed my flight"

The "last week in a city" post is usually one filled with a ton of stuff. While recovering from the weekend that entailed a muddy music festival wasn't ideal to explore the entire city, I said, "I'm not normal" and continued to do everything normally, as if my Blood Alcohol Content wasn't still very high from previous activities. This week I:

ate a cow. Well, a very large steak at a very tourist-y Colombian restaurant. Andres D.C. had been recommended by visitors and locals alike, however, I wasn't a huge fan. Our farewell event was held here on Tuesday night (prime time before Gringo Tuesdays) and most of us ate big chunks of meat while a band performed. The meat was served on a hot iron skillet, which meant mine was super over cooked (I'm a medium-rare gal). It's also never been so hard to order beer before. The deal of 6 Coronas for the price of 5 drew everyone in...until we got the bill for 75,000 pesos. That's about $5-6 for a CORONA. Yuck. Oh well. The company was great, and I got to wear this giant bib, so that's a win. Also, it was Morgan and Kara's birthday within the next week, so we celebrated that too.

worked from a super neat cafe in the Candelaria area (because I wanted to check it out more). Highly reco'd! (If I could remember the name...I'm behind on these posts and unfortunately do not).

Totes adorbs. I promise I'll go back through and figure out what this place was called!

drank the most caffeine I've probably ever consumed at this amazing coffee place called Catacion Publica. THIS one, I remember - because I was so freaking hyper that I broke a swing set afterwards (almost) on a children's playground. Tried alllll the coffee, along with actual coffee beans (pre-coffee) that were marinated and tasted like cherries. Also we got chocolate. Because treat yo'self. Click through the pics - the place was also really cool aesthetically, which helped.

went back to the amazing burger place and split one with Gianni because *shrug* it was delicious. Also had some life chats - it's always fun to go somewhere one on one with people you don't normally interact with alone. Definitely a goal of mine for this last quarter of RY.
did more workouts, watched more Netflix, occupied my bed a lot. I was so damn healthy this month, besides that burger. (and all the aguardiente and Aguilla beer. Also, at some point we switched from Club Colombia to Aguilla. Not sure why or when. Just wanted to note that for myself, mostly.) #beer #agardiente #steak #protein #gains
went on a CHIVA BUS with all my best friends. This was fun. Essentially, you get on a party bus, hold on to the railings on the roof while it drives through traffic, and get aguardiente poured in your mouth from a carton, like it's some sort of adult Capri Sun. There was also music blasting, lights flashing, and some moderate icing happening. (Note: a few people in our group didn't know what "getting iced" was. So we iced them. And if you don't know what it is, well, don't let it be known to me because I will ice you, too!) Oh yeah, and somehow Marco's pants came undone again. Not sure what's going on with him lately. Afterwards, when we were all properly drunk on aguardiente, we headed to a bar (the last pic) and hung out before I bailed and went back to my awesome bed.

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took the walking Graffiti Tour on my very last day here, of course. *definitely not a procrastinator* But so glad I did - the street art scene here is amazing. Plus, I got to check out more of the downtown area which I had hardly seen besides the first weekend when it was pouring rain during our scavenger hunt. Plenty of cool pics - click to expand!

had my first Chicha and spent a fun day with Michael! They looked neon and weird and tasted kind of like kombucha. Chicha is alcoholic (about 4-5%) and pretty sweet, so I couldn't handle more than one of them. But they're fun to drink, especially out of this weird bowl thing. Also, the table across from us got 3 LITERS OF IT. I HAD to creep and take this picture.

had a great dinner with Michael at some French fusion place. It was ok. The food was prettier than it tasted, but we had a nice chat - hitting so many people goalz this month!

played Tejo for the first time (which I will go on to write about for the next month, given that we had a tournament throughout the month of Medellin. More on that later.) Of course, this was the last night before our very early morning flight/bus ride to our next city. Can you guess how this ended using context clues from the title of this post? -.-

Tejo is great. You throw tejos (smooth, big rocks) at a board that resembles cornhole, except instead of wood and a hole in the wood to aim at, it's clay and a metal circle surrounded by dynamite. Same same. If you hit an explosive, it's 3 points. If you get it in the center of the circle, it's 6 points. If you hit and explosive AND it lands in the middle, it's 9 points - you play to 15 (or 21) alternating turns with players from the opposite team. And a key rule of our Tejo League?

You must have a beer in your other hand while throwing the tejo.

This means exactly what you think - you drink a lot. You also celebrate with aguardiente shots in between amazing throws because your team is somehow a dream team and has yet to lose, like, 9 games in a row. Jeff, Sami and I were this Dream Team. Think Harlem Globetrotters only without the tricks. (Wait, that's lame.) Think Tim, Manu and David circa Spurs 1999. Whatever. We weren't just good. We were GREAT. And the more we won, the more we drank. And the more we drank, the more we wanted to drink more. So some of us did - 6 of us continued on to the next bar while the intelligent people went home to pack (which I had yet to do because I am not smart) and get ready for the early morning bus and plane ride to Medellin. I opted for plane ride and my flight wasn't until 10 AM. Plenty of time in the morning to pack! The bus people left very early though, around 7 AM. Meandering around the city, we made our way to a few bars and I seemed to forget that I had a flight the next morning. I have never missed a flight. I would be fine! So here's what the night looked like (note the carton of Aguardiente in the 3rd and 4th pics, previously referred to as "adult Capri Sun"):

Doesn't this look fun?

It was.

So fun, that I missed my flight.

If you just read the big words on this post, you'd get the gist. But I needed to document. Alas, I woke up in a panic, at 10:30 AM, not packed, still drunk, and overall just a mess of a human. I freaked out - we were supposed to be out of our apartments by 8 AM. I was 2.5 hours late. My roommate had already left (on time, mind you). I immediately got online and booked another flight for 3 PM. I was out $100 and still needed to Uber to the airport; I also needed to pack still. This is what occurred:

I was still drunk. I'm not even sure what time I got home. I called an uber, cleaned up as fast as I could, and still managed to somehow leave behind my favorite triangle necklace. (Note: I have a weird thing for triangles and I'm not sure why, but I gravitate toward them. I have now lost 2 triangle necklaces and it hurts my heart. I always replace them but it still sucks. Lucky number 3?)

I got in my uber and realized that I'd be at the airport for a good 4 hours before my actual flight.

"It's fine, I'll catch up on some work and hang out in the airport lounge," I stupidly thought to myself.

Na. Turns out, the domestic terminal in the Bogota airport has no lounge. *screams* And there's no A/C. And I was sweating pure aguardiente. I bought a giant bottle of water, sat in the normal part of the airport, like a peasant, and waited. Finally, when it was time to board, we got up in the air and came right back down - there's a total of about 20 minutes that you're over 30,000 feet in the air on this flight. 'Tis very short. By the time I got into Medellin, the bus was almost there (a 9 hour ride, I believe?) I should've taken the damn bus. But I would have been even more late for that, so whatever. Couldn't win either way. (Fun Fact: Jeff also missed the bus because he was in our drinking group and it didn't make me feel so bad. Two others had a later flight so they didn't have to worry about it, and Maijid apparently slept the entire bus ride. I guess we're all great humans together.)

Luckily, one of my Medellin roomies (Morgan) and Margit had taken a separate flight from San Andres and were at the airport at the same time as me, so we split a cab from the airport to our place. The airport was about an hour away so that was nice to be able to split the fare. Also, we were all hungover and bought a beer for the ride, which increased my chances of liver disease (but also made me feel better physically. That's probably bad, huh?).

Alright, so back to bullet points, but that concludes my ridiculous(ly embarrassing) flight-missing story.

arrived to Medellin, and a gorgeous apartment view (but a meh apartment). Went to the grocery store with Bambi (my other roomie), and stocked up on alcohol (ugh) and a cake for Morgan (it was her actual birthday!) We got ready and had a little pre-party before heading to a bar for Kara/Morgan birthday shenanigans. It was a very fun first night, and I think we could all see very clearly: this month was going to be a shit show.

stayed up way too late and got up way too early because we had to go play paintball for Kara's birthday at one of Pablo Escobar's old properties. No big deal. We took a bus to Guatape, where we then rode on the tops of jeeps to the actual house. (My tailbone just flinched - it was a bumpy ride.) We took a small tour of the property, heard some fascinating stories about Pablo, and played (AND WON!) a paintball game. Then we had a giant lunch, took a boat back to our bus while singing Despacito at the top of our lungs, got back on the bus, and I practically fell into bed because holy crap what a week.

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This was a week where lessons were learned. I now know that sometimes, aguardiente does win. As many pours of it directly into my mouth hole that have been had, this was the one time I was actually defeated. I admit it, and I am not ashamed - even after falling asleep on a random man's shoulder at the airport and waking up to his gentle "perdon, senora...". Like a lullaby...sigh.