In Colombia many things are over the top: almost naked girls, fake lips every now and then, booty that could serve as a table... No wonder that also Christmas lights are out of this world. It was one of the reasons I really wanted to spend Christmas in Colombia. I secretly like cheesy, flashy lights. So I was wondering where in Colombia shall we stay. Google told me that Medellin is nr 1 when it comes to Christmas lights, that they are the biggest, the brightest, simply the best. And so there we were... As soon as we took our first Uber taxi I started talking to the driver about the lights. "Yes, in the past years lights were amazing but this year the biggest are not there, the river where they normally are, is under construction...". So Google was not really updated on that...
It seemed like it was a mantra among all the drivers. They all were telling me how extraordinary are the lights in Medellin every year except for this year.

Still we decided to see what they have because well, we were already there. And honestly it's hard to compare because we have never seen the real deal but what we saw was insane. Closed streets, people enjoying food, over the top lights and booze. It was not even a single place like that, nope there were few:) It was beautiful and insane but it's also true that with 30 something °C sweating in our kitchen we somehow didn't feel like it was Christmas...
And then New Year in Guatape. Everyone we met said it was beautiful, extraordinary and El Peñón so the crazy looking mountain/rock was stunning. Maybe it was but from far and when you look from the right side. From another side there was a "G" painted on it. I guess they wanted to paint the whole word Guatape but they ran out of paint and energy to do it. When coming closer, I saw that the stairs looked like inspired by communist Poland combined with a cheesy castle. And on top of it there is a hideous building that looks like a perfect house for a witch and a poor one cuz it looks unfinished. Guatape itself could maybe be ok but it looked like cheesy polish seaside village with all kinds of activities like riding a water banana or eating wafels. And it was packed!!! But the worse of it was the hostel. We chose one that was a bit out of city to be a bit calm but we ended up in a total hippie place where people slept even 2 in one bed, on hammocks, in tents and probably if it didn't rain they would also sleep in carton boxes. What they saved on accommodation, they definitely spent on weed. It was omnipresent at every hour. So were the screaming kids. But this I get, I would scream too. Actually mostly I wanted to scream while waiting to pee or to take a shower in the only bathroom available. Too bad hippies didn't want to be united with nature and pee outside... And as usual in places like that there were people playing guitar and singing, unfortunately without a talent...at least we were not alone:) Dominic and Sarah, the couple we met in Filandia, joined us. So we tried to make the best of it and we did some hiking and we rented a boat to go around the lakes. In final end we managed to change our reservation and leave earlier. When we were checking out the guy asked us where we were going. When I told him and he got excited and said it was an amazing hostel. It was indeed. Just that when we were checking out at 6 a.m. the party was still very much on, smell of weed was even more hardcore than in the first place (I thought it was not possible) and the recepcionists had an additional job of making lists who wanted some cocaine... Nice beginning of a New Year...