Birthday trip!

On Friday, I kept threatening to go to the grocery store and couldn't understand why Brent didn't want me to. He eventually spilled that it was because we were going out of town the next day -- my surprise birthday trip!

We've taken a little trip every year for my birthday, though I truly wasn't expecting it this year because we've been so busy getting settled here. But, on Saturday, off we went to nearby Guatapé, a town we had both been hearing a lot about.

It was a gorgeous two-hour bus ride up, up, up the mountains. We arrived and were delighted by a quaint little town on the lake.

We were hungry, so we dropped in to the first hostel we saw. They had a room -- a painfully small room, but hey, we just needed a place to sleep that night and store our stuff. And it was ridiculously inexpensive. We didn't realize it was on top of a discoteca the jammed until about 1:30 the next morning, nor that it was half a block from the church, whose bells pealed around 7;00. Over and over.

Anyway, we had a nice lunch, walked around town, and took a short tuk-tuk ride up to La Piedra, a huge rock that overlooks the lake.  The views from up there were absolutely incredible.

We walked back in to Guatapé, cruised around the market a little more, and stopped for dinner at a restaurant that served Indian, Italian, Colombian, and Mexican cuisine. We were concerned that a restaurant that does everything couldn't possibly do any of it right, but we were wrong -- I had an excellent veggie quesadilla and Brent had some awesome red curry.

We got up the next day (after that rough sleep), strolled around once more, and headed back to Medellín.

This is a must-see kind of place, and we look forward to going back there -- especially with some of you people who might come to visit. We'll pick a different hotel next time.