Santa Fe de Antioquia

After 10 days of exhausting unemployment in Medellin we thought we could use a mini-break. So on 1-2 Feb we decided to take a trip to Santa Fe de Antioquia with Juli’s mum Olga and best-friend Paula and her boyfriend Danny. Santa Fe is about a 1hr30min drive to the north-west of Medellin, on some very twisty roads. Along the way I experienced my first police checkpoint which meant showing IDs and a frisk (men only), but it was very relaxed and is common when driving between cities. Over the drive we dropped from 1,500m in Medellin to 500m above sea level in Santa Fe, which makes the latter boiling hot and humid all year round. Our Airbnb was in an enormous holiday home complex which had eight swimming pools so we spent most of the weekend trying to figure out which one we liked the most!

Santa Fe itself is a lovely old colonial town and contains what I’m discovering is the typical look of colonial towns in Colombia – a big square with a small park in the middle and a church at one end. Some can be a little rough around the edges but this one is really well maintained and the surrounding buildings are full of nice cafes and heladerías (ice cream parlours) which you can enjoy from little balconies upstairs. In the pictures you may also notice us sporting some rather nice traditional sombreros, courtesy of the square’s market stalls.

On the way back to Medellin we stopped by an impressively old wooden suspension bridge, Puente de Occidente, which was built in the 1890s – Wikipedia tells me when it was built it was the third largest suspension bridge in the world. Only small vehicles and pedestrians can cross and it trembles and creaks when a motorbike trundles past. But, luckily we survived our crossing to make it to the other side and lunch! 

Next blog: our trip to the Caribbean coast