We slept well last night and decided that we'll extend our stay in the Black Sheep Hostel for an extra 2 nights. The football match today between Colombia and Brazil sort of messed up our schedule plus we want to make a day trip to Guatapé.

We had booked on a free walking tour of Medellín with Real City Tours but had no idea of what or where we might go, it had simply been recommended to us. Medellín is a massive city with 2 million people and covers an area of maybe 30 by 40km so we'd only be visiting a small part.

Our guide met us at the hostel and led our group to the metro where we took three stops to Alpujarra in Downtown. This is a part of Medellín where tourists might not visit because of the various safety warnings given out. We had a very informative 3-4 hours about history, including politics, drugs & guerillas, of both the country & city while we walked through the streets of Downtown.

The people of Medellín, 'the Paisas', consider themselves different and better than the remainder of the population. This feeling came about through history because those seeking a new life from Spain weren't the usual gold prospectors, they came from the Basque region and were seeking freedom along with some Jews. The desire for freedom is what drove the people up into the mountainous region. In the mountains they grew coffee and built a railroad for transport and generally industrialised the area while the rest of the country remained primarily peasant farmers.

Today the streets were busier than normal - it was mentioned that today had been declared an impromptu public holiday because of the football match against Brazil - Colombia had never reached the Quarter Final of the World Cup before. Everyone seemed to be wearing the yellow Colombian football shirt but there were still dozens of vendors trying to sell shirts every few metres. If they weren't selling shirts, they were selling anything in the national colours of yellow, blue & red.

After a few hours walking through the streets, we realised that we hadn't seen any other foreigners and it wasn't because they are hidden - Colombians are generally about a head shorter than Europeans. We were a bit of a novelty too, locals would often come over to join our little group whenever we stopped for more information about a particular building or place. Whether the locals understood English or not didn't seem to deter them from just hanging around until we moved on.

Bizarrely, churches seemed to draw in the the seedier side of the city. Prostitutes would wait for business outside and market stalls in the side street sold porn DVDs. This was explained away through religion - people could simply go into church and confess they were going to do something 'bad' and ask for the Virgin Mary's blessing/forgiveness. If the prostitutes and/or porn remained outside then the Virgin Mary obviously didn't object to their transgression.

A similar train of thought was used by assassins especially during La Violencia, the most violent and troubled period of Colombia's history. To absolve themselves of sin, men would ask for The Virgin Mary's divine intervention in a shooting they were going to carry out - if the target was innocent and didn't deserve to die then the higher power would divert the bullet saving the life of the target. Hard to comprehend but true.

The information given on the tour wasn't all doom and gloom, it also gave an understanding as to why the Colombian people are so friendly and will celebrate with gusto whenever possible. Their past has been marred by so many problems that life itself is something to be celebrated. Anything on top of that is a bonus and even the small things count - a Colombian cyclist won a single stage of the Tour d' France once and he is written into history books; a national football team squad became legends when they scored only one goal against the odds in a losing match. Even having tourists in their country is something to celebrate because they feel it is a sign that their country is moving on from their troubled past. Also the metro of Medellín is in pristine condition as it was built when it seemed everything was going downhill, it presents hope as do the newly renovated plazas and libraries in the worst parts of the city - nobody would dream of destroying any of that.

It turned out that our guide was studying "Story Telling", which is a big thing in Colombia. Her skill, enthusiasm and animation certainly added to the tour.

The tour finished in good time to take the Metro back to El Poblado for the big game. The streets around Zona Rosa were rammed, not only were the bars and restaurants full, the crowd was jostling for the best position to watch the game in the big screens set up in the central park. We managed to find a couple of spare seats at Patrick's Irish Bar. It had about 20 screens around the whole bar so regardless which way we turned, we could always see the game.

Unfortunately the game didn't go Colombia's way, they lost 2-0 but the fans were still very proud of their team and cheered for them as though they had won.

We left shortly after the game and grabbed something to eat at fast food diner on the way back to the hostel. We had arepa, a flat bread made of ground maize dough with ham and cheese. It was kind of like a grilled toastie but a lot more filling.