First day in Medellin, Colombia Jan 2, 2026

In the last episode, I arrived super early in the morning and deicded to hang out in the airport until 7, before snagging a taxi and heading to the homestay. As the taxi driver took me through town I saw what looked like a light display over and along the main river in down town. I made a note of it for later. I arrived at the homestay and was beat so I just took about a 4 hr nap. Later that afternoon I walked around the neighborhood and was getting hungry. Now there are franchises of all sorts EVERYWHERE in town. There are shops in almost every little nook and cranny in every neighborhood and street as well. Just a flew blocks from my apartment I swung into a 24 hour franchise type restaurant. Did I mention they were everywhere...

The meal was $5.84 US

 I talked to my host about the lights and she mentioned it happens every year and that she hadn't been to it, so I asked if she'd like to take me down there or go with me and she said yes. Later that evening we walked to the Metro rail station and she showed me how to do the entire process of getting a card, going through the gates and riding it. We had to do a transfer to another lines and it was a good simple process that I would be doing to go to my Spanish class everyday of the week. We got off at a station and right below us was where the light show started. It was like a major carinval and there were THOUSANDS of people. Also, there were tents with people selling all sorts of food and other trinkets. The light display was produced by the city power company and had probably fifty or more huge lighted figures, animals, buildings, etc. all lit up along the river walk. They also had lights strewn across the river with different animals hanging below, like a parrot, Bee, Humgingbird.Here are a bunch of the lights from the show. It was really spectacular to see this nice display.