Wrong Turn, Adventure

Two middle-aged Colombian women had somewhat reluctantly come to my rescue and were swiping at me with their rolled up newspaper. We were on a residential street in a trendy Medellin suburb and they had responded to my desperate calls of “Ayudame, ayudame por favor!” Knowing the Spanish for “help me please” had finally come in handy.

It was my final morning in Colombia and I had decided to go for a quick walk, stretching my legs ahead of a long flight. The pesky stingers attacked when I was within minutes of landing safely on the hostel’s doorstep. I had turned down a side street on a whim to extend my walk and my usually reliable intuition had failed. Instead of stumbling upon an interesting Colombian cultural festival, I got a sting to the knee, an angry army of wasps and the fascinated glances of two Medellin mujeres. What a sight I must have been: the crazy gringa with flailing arms, running across the road in distress with a trail of aggravated and aggressive buzzers.

To be fair, the morning of the fateful sting was the tail end of an otherwise enjoyable second visit to Colombia. Despite the concerns of family and friends in Australia who had spoken to me before my first trip to Colombia, replete with warnings of cartels and cocaine (and the always appreciated words to a traveller: “but you’ll get kidnapped!”), Colombia had been one of my highlight destinations in South America. Colombia was vivid, fascinating, an overwhelmingly friendly country of contrasts, from the Caribbean charm of Cartagena, to the cooler climates of Bogota and the coffee and cocktails of cosmopolitan Medellin, and everything in between.

And so it was that final Medellin morning, after three additional stings, repeated newspaper swipes and a few hours, I was at the airport, itching at the now full blown wasp love bites, temporarily tattooed on my face and knee. The danger which I encountered, in the form of sniper wasps that day, was surely not at all what my friends and family could have imagined in their wildest dreams to be my most threatening Colombian encounter when they had warned me of the nation’s supposed dangers.

You never know what is around the next corner when you get out there and start exploring, but I’ll tell you this, if you hear buzzing, run!