After a few immensely enjoyable days in Guatapé hiking and kayaking, we attempted to take the bus to Salento in the coffee region. The bus leaves Guatapé every half hour from the station on the malecon next to the lake. Regrettably, there's no direct route to the south. We went back to Medellin, took the metro back to Poblado, the part of the city we loved so much, and walked to the south bus terminal.
The bus terminals are outstanding. Free wifi is available in the majority of the big ones. They are often connected with a mall of some sort, and always have a cafeteria with stalls pushing local foods to travelers. The station in the south of Medellin even has a movie theater.
After a quick bite at Subway, we got on board the bus for the five hour ride toward Armenia, which we were told would let us off midway at the road to Salento. The road was majestic traveling along the spine of a mountain range above the jungle and through banana plantations. Darkness beat us to our scheduled disembark, so we argued with the driver to let us off...
...he won. We were held hostage and taken to Armenia at the end of the line. We were furious that the company told us they would drop us off, but made no mention despite several reminders that they do not, in fact, drop off after dark.
Our cellphones were dead, and the Armenia terminal happened to be the first without wifi, of course. We parked on the floor and reviewed our guidebooks to find a solution to our marooning in a town we hadn't planed on visiting. We decided to scurry across the street for a sketchy hotel for the night.
The next morning we took a bus from Armenia on the scenic route through the trashy city. After an hour of head bobbing in and out of sleep, because we had spent the majority of the night concerned about platoons of ants and the possibility of bed bugs, we arrived in the breathtakingly beautiful city of Salento.
