Hotel Mariscal Robledo, Santa Fe de Antioquia
a local truck delivering potatoes and rice
Our hotel was the best in Santa Fe de Antioquia, according to Trip Advisor, and was a beautiful old colonial building with lots of charm. The downside was the lack of hot water--the shower head had a button to move towards caliente, but only produced tepid water. The sink had no hot water at all. Despite being the "best" hotel, it was very basic, with no amenities. But, we enjoyed the location, the large room, and the charm. Nonetheless, given the very limited sightseeing and tourist infrastructure--only a couple of restaurants besides very basic, no shops, but bicycling and horseback riding is available--we will not add Santa Fe de Antioquia to our itinerary when we take a group to Colombia.
It's a great place to visit if you want to relax around a pool, enjoy an old colonial town with colonial architecture and not much more, or ride a bike or a horse. It's about 1 1/2 hours from Medellin in a beautiful valley. But, then, Medellin itself is in a beautiful mountain valley. Santa Fe de Antioquia also has a religious art museum if that interests you. We had planned to spend 2 days in Villa de Leyva, a colonial town outside Bogota, but were stopped by the roads that had been closed to all traffic for days because of protesters.
There was a large police and army presence all along the highway from Medellin to Santa Fe de Antioquia. The government had ordered that all roads be kept open, so ordered (reportedly) 50,000 troops to make sure that happened. We saw lots of soldiers, lots of landslides, a few protesters, but no roadblocks.
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