MEDELLÍN, COLOMBIA

Medellín is probably most well-known for the Medellín Cartel, headed up by Pablo Escobar, the infamous coke kingpin, along with the Ochoa Vázquez brothers. Wikipedia tells me that the cartel made $60 million dollars PER DAY which is just fucking insane. In 1989, Forbes magazine ranked Escobar as the seventh richest person in the world.

All of this kind of sucks, because what people really should know is all that crazy violence and corruption somehow turned Medellín into this amazingly progressive city. In 2012 they won an international award for their cool ass cable car public transportation, which allows the poorer citizens an affordable, quick way to get down from the slums in the mountains into the wealthier center for jobs and education.  Crime still exists, but not anywhere near the astronomical rates it did in the 70's and 80's.

The city's surrounded by a ridiculous Jurassic Park level of greenery. I don't think I've ever seen so many crazy trees in my life.

El Piedra de Peñol

That big rock is El Peñol, and they built stairs into it so you could climb up and enjoy the view. Up close it's stripey and awesome.

A floating restaurant on the reservoir.

The Metrocable system.

We had an amazing time in Medellín, save for the gross bros who go there for the prostitution. The city is full of gorgeous healthy people and that's made it somewhat of a center for the seedier type of sex tourism that happens with all kinds of disgusting first worlders, but it's an easy scene to avoid, even if you're out partying and drinking all over the place. In contrast with Bogotá, it's a way more developed city with an incredibly temperate climate (70s-80s fahrenheit the whole time) that gives it a certain paradisiacal feeling. There are remnants of the edginess that made it the murder capitol of the world not so long ago, but we never felt any of it, and there will never be anything but a soft spot in my heart for the place.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA!

This is going to be a long one. I went to Colombia in March for two weeks and I'm only now finally getting around to going through photos. I can't find the SLR but I hardly used it, I had been advised not to lug it around in certain parts of the country so most of these are iPhone photos. (So they aren't great.)

We visited Bogotá, Medellín, Isla Baru, and Cartagena. We booked all our domestic flights through Viva Colombia, a dirt cheap domestic airline. In Bogotá, we stayed at a hostel, in Medellín we did airbnb, in Isla Baru we stayed at this totally rad lady's beach house called Baruchica, and in Cartagena we airbnb'd again. I LOVED IT. I had a couple colleagues from Colombia who gave me great advice, and a bunch of random friends had gone and recommended it as a not-too-touristy, safe and awesome place. I'm super glad we went and would like to go back again one day.

Our hostel breakfast was always one egg, fruit, and two tiny pieces of toast which turns out isn't enough food for the amount of walking we were doing. The coffee in Colombia tends to be surprisingly shitty because they export all the best shit. BUT we did learn from this place about 'La Fina' margarine, which sounds terrible but is the most amazing tasting thing, better than any European butter I've ever had in my life. We even contemplated hoarding some to bring back home until I got the bright idea to google it and realized Amazon sells it.

There's this amazing museum of gold that houses a bunch of Pre-Colombian artifacts (and, obviously, a shit ton of gold.) I can't get over how much I loved this museum. Also it's so strange how a room full of shiny things can make you feel like some kind of weird, uncultivated animal that wants all the shiny things.

I really loved Bogotá, and it was totally not what I expected. The cool thing about Colombia is that all the areas we visited were just so different from each other that they felt like separate countries. Bogotá was massive, we realized up at Montserrate where we had a view of the entire city. The Plaza Bolivar still has damage from FARC bombing government buildings, and as recently as 2009 they were blowing shit up in Bogotá. There are policemen with dogs everywhere, I assumed they were drug dogs but found out later they were bomb dogs. There's graffiti everywhere, which I absolutely loved. For some reason, no matter how old I get or how much money I make, I feel like I'll always identify with the underdog and graffiti represents something really powerful to me that I couldn't do justice to articulating. Counterculture bullshit maybe. I only know how I felt.

The city is built into the Andes, so the steep hills and cliffs are exhausting. It's at something like 8,000 feet elevation, and that makes it worse. But it helps keep the people in Bogota that we saw super fit, despite a diet made up of foods like this:

Wow I forgot how much I missed this until right now. Bandeja Paisa is a typical midday Colombian meal, but I ate it for breakfast after my first killer hangover down there. And it solved EVERYTHING. This needs to be in America. (Side note: I ate basically an avocado a day while there, and I didn't get significantly fatter, but my hair looked like a goddamn Pantene commercial. If I could afford that many avocadoes in Brooklyn I could probably make a living selling hair.) This particular plate I have to confess I ordered at a mall – malls are all over the place there – although the caveat I would give is that they basically hand made everything. So I don't count it as fast food. The plate I ordered was a quarter avocado, ground beef, white rice, red beans, an arepa (FYI though arepas are also all over the place in Colombia, and this one was terrible), a plaintain, chicharron, an over easy egg and sausage. Best Breakfast Ever award.

New year, new start

I finally got my new iMac! That's kind of a lie, I got it a like a month ago, but haven't been using it very much because of a few different reasons including that I got so used to not using a computer in my free time. Also, in a typical Natalie move, I never brought in my old one for data recovery so I felt very cut off from my past, digitally speaking. Including this poor neglected blog.

A lot has happened since. It's a little ridiculous to be proud of not using a personal computer when the reality is I spent five days a week every day on a computer at work, have an iPhone and an iPod and a work laptop, but honestly it's changed things in a big way. I hardly check facebook or any of the old blogs I used to read. I don't know what's going on in the world at all, it took me days before I found out about that school shooting up in Connecticut (was it even Connecticut? I don't really know.)

Anyway, here's a rundown.

1. Andy and I celebrated our ten year anniversary. It didn't go perfectly.

2. There was a hurricane in New York, I had some days off work but Brooklyn had power faster than Manhattan so I was back at work before all my friends. First time I've hated Brooklyn.

2. I secretly hoped the world would end on December 21st when it started snowing but I was disappointed along with all those idiots who spent thousands of dollars on underground bunkers and Spam.

3. I turned thirty. I spent my thirtieth birthday alone because there was another snowstorm. The weather really fucked me this year.

4. My cat is almost recovered from her bladder stones.

5. I learned how to read tarot cards and got a little weird with crystals and chakra aligning and cleansing rituals. I'm normal, don't worry!

6. I went to a psychic and cried.

7. I learned three chords on my new ukelele.

You're all caught up now.

Off the grid

I killed my computer last August after returning from Iceland and Amsterdam, when I tried to upload 40 gigs of photos without checking my available disk space. Since then, I've just done without, surviving with my work computer and iPad. Honestly, I don't miss it. At some point ill have to try recovering my data and buying a new computer, but in the meantime I've been enjoying this little sabbatical.

Oops

I haven't been posting, because I've been out enjoying the summer. Get off the internet and go out there! Not today though, I think there's a tornado in Brooklyn. My instagram's all clouds right now.

Antwon - Helicopter

Hipster rap for the summer

Curtains

Because of a certain orange cat's bladder stones, we need to replace our curtains. Our old cheap Ikea curtains were too long, but I liked the look of how they draped on the floor. Unfortunately, our cat thought they looked like a bathroom. We trimmed off the offending bottom part but now our curtains are too short and look awful.

I have a bad habit of getting obsessed with small, unimportant things. Curtains-wise, it's curtain rings. I have to have curtain rings this time – none of that stupid cheap ass grommet or "pole-pocket" caterpillar looking crap. This is mostly because I saw it in someone else's apartment and it looked really rich. I'm also obsessed with my apartment looking rich, although I'm sure actual rich people don't buy half as many fake-gold spray painted knickknacks as I do. The contenders are:

Chevron stripes are always great, but I'm a little concerned at how they look in the photo. They hardly look Chevron at all! They're all over the place.

I love these. I love the graphic print and the color (online at least) but my boyfriend gets one veto and he used it.

It might be hard to see, but these have PEARL TRIM along the borders. What's richer than that?? It's a little bridal though, and I hate wedding stuff. Also, a hard white will turn yellow, because we both smoke.

How cute are these – outline curtains! They're a little dark though, and I don't like to limit our light. There's a white version but it sucks.







Such a tough decision. Also, curtains not from Ikea are really expensive. And why do they sell only one panel at a time?? What kind of adults who are dropping $200 per panel just buy ONE curtain panel for a window? Maybe we'll just go to Ikea after all.