Medellin - Cartagena - Buenos Aires

this post will be a little brief as i have around 30 minutes before i am taken to the bus station for yet another overnight bus trip - this time to cordoba...

the last few days in colombia were relatively uneventful really. the presentation went very well, although the audience was small. sound enthusiasts miguel isaza and his amigo alejo were present, as was felipe rodriguez whom i met at matik matik in bogota.

actually my spanish painter friend and i got a little worse for wear on the friday night (24th) and didn't end up back at the residency house until around 7am... ouch. saturday was spent just taking it easy as you can imagine - i think i continued to work on my website when i eventually woke up.

sunday mi amiga juliana collected me from campos de gutierrez and took me, along with her sister and friend, to an old family house her grandmother currently lives in which was around an hour's drive away from medellin. the house was absolutely lovely, as was the scenery, after lunch, juliana and i climbed the nearby hills to look out over the valley - breathtaking!

i spent the next few days trying to get a tattoo of a rose design alejandro has done for me, but the only tattooist who came recommended was busy until 9th april... so now i have to find a recommended tattooist here in buenos aires... if anyone reading this has any friends who have been tattooed in argentina and are happy with the results, please let me know!

i then took a trip to cartagena, on the invitation of juliana, who was working there for a few days, doing the make-up for a bikini shoot - i did offer to go earlier and help out but that never happened unfortunately... so we spent a couple of days lounging around in the very hot and humid city, the very hot (and for me dangerous as i got sunburned) beach and the rooftop pool of the building her uncle, juan, lives in.

so because of the sunburn, i did not go out in the sun too much after that but did enjoy the company of juliana and her family, an amazing beach resort i think called tierra bomba and generally just relaxing.

then on my return we ran around collecting my various bags of clothes and equipment, and then as i was checking in online for my flight to buenos aires i found i had inadvertentlybooked for may, not april! so i spent another day and a half in medellin, catching up with admin and again generally relaxing. and managed to rearrange the flight for a more acceptable time of day than 7am, for no extra charge, although it did mean three short flights through the night, so only 2 hours sleep before getting to buenos aires, where i thought i was going to be beaten up by everyone i met just for being british!! this hasn't happened of course, and is not the case - everyone is super friendly here and the city feels like one of the safest i have visited in south america!

i was met by alan courtis, who took me to the residency house i'm staying in while in buenos aires (centro de investigaciones artistas - or cia) and then we wandered around for me to get cash, then for us to get some lunch. i then had to sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon as it had all caught up with me. at 8pm alan, alma laprida and juan jose calarco came to cia and we chatted music, etc. then went for peruvian food, which was fantastic, then to a kind of cool bar with really awful music, followed by a terrible bar with slightly less awful music. it was fun though!

so now i prepare for my overnight trip to a festival where the three artists above are not going now because of various issues, but i go to because i feel a commitment to my agreement to go. a shame as juan jose and i were supposed to perform as a duo and i was really looking forward to that. however i agree with his reasons for not going.

from cordoba i will however be travelling with juan jose to jujuy, which looks stunning and should be a fantastic place to record.

ha ha! not so short after all... ok, more in a week and a half!