You can’t visit Colombia without seeing an El Corral hamburger shop, and you don’t want to miss their delicious burgers and fries.

We visited La Piedra de Penol over the holidays and found the summit completely rejuvenated! The shop was open again and it felt normal to visit the lower part of the summit again.

A sunflower I found at the CES Veterinary Clinic in Envigado (a suburb of Medellin).

Just this morning I found this lady working on the street, collecting recyclable trash manually for later resale. This was taken around 10AM so, as you can see, she, and probably some associates, had been at work for a long time. This is real poverty. And this is real determination to get ahead, no matter how dirty the work involved is.

Before they built the tunnel linking Medellin and Western Antioquia, the only way to get to San Jerónimo, a beautiful little village, was by crossing the cordillera at the summit. The view is spectacular. Coming down on the western side, I found this fantastic sight.

I found these docks in 2002 when I was teaching English in Urabá on the weekends. Urabá is a low-lying region near Panama that produces huge amounts of bananas for the export market.

I found this large Colombian flag flying near the San Felipe de Barajas Fortress in Cartagena on July 4, 2002. It was quite the sight.

I found this flower at Medellín’s Jardín Botánico earlier this year. The Jardín Botánico is a peaceful, natural place worth a visit every now and then for a break from hot asphalt and littered sidewalks.

I took this back in February of 2002 when the security situation in Eastern Antioquia was shaky at best. There were painfully few tourists at La Piedra del Peñol that day, but more than enough soldiers to compensate.

Today, the security situation has radically improved and people are visiting La Piedra in droves again.

While work progressed on the tunnel linking Medellin and Western Antioquia, this road was used to ferry supplies, people and machines to the work site. This is the part of San Jeronimo that lies just on the other side of the cordillera from Medellin.