Guesthouse Los Mangos Girardota

This is our residential house, where we live with Alejandra’s parents and our son. It is located in the small village of Girardota, 30min away from Medellin’s centre by car, or 15min by metro Niquia (furthest station north of Medellin in the municipality of Bello). To know more about Girardota, look through “suggested destinations” and then “Antioquia”. It is an old traditional Antioquian house made of tapia (wood and mud). It has several extensions in bricks. And today it has 6 bedrooms (3 of them for rent, with 2 private bathrooms and 1 shared bathroom)…for a total of up to 14 people in total. We have hot water in all bathrooms thanks to a gas heater (we have to point that out because it is not always the case in Colombia, you will often have to wash with cold water). We also have WIFI internet, a pool, and TVs in all bedrooms.

The kitchen/dining room is outside and has a big table for up to 14 people. There is also a little kiosk if you’d rather eat apart from the family. If you wish to eat inside, there is also a dining room inside too, only if we prepare the meal for you. The pool is 8m*4m, and 1.3m deep. There is a volleyball net, a petanque/molki area, a billard/ pool table that can be played both French or Carambola ways, an electronic darts game, and numerous others games (poker, parkes, chess, dominos, uno, tarot, playing cards….) to keep you entertained.

We have 2 dogs (a Labrador and another smaller adopted dog) and 2 parrots that have been given to us (yellow head amazons that can speak); the 4 of them roam freely around the house. While at the house you can see a multitude of coloured birds, especially because we took the habit of leaving them ripped bananas next to the kitchen to incite them to visit us. There are also lots of green hummingbirds with a yellow/orange beak. If you have a good sight and get lucky, you might see the occasional green iguana coming for a swim in the pool.., but they blend in really well with the green of the tress and grass, so it is really difficult to spot them. We also have plenty of fruit trees: mandarines, oranges, lemons, zapotes, guanabana, mangoes, papayas, maracuya, lulo, plantain bananas (the ones you eat cooked up, green or ripped but cooked), murapo bananas ( small sweet bananas), different sorts of avocados…and maybe you will be here when all the fruits are ready. We also plan to do an eco-garden in the next future, at the moments we only have herbs and onions. We listen to a lot of Colombian music, or not, not necessarily very loud; you can find yourself invited to drink aguardiente or rhum and dance salsa or cumbia if you don’t mind. We can also teach you to prepare a good “sancocho”, sort of Colombian pot-au-feu; or we can organize a karaoke nights with some Colombian friends who are good singers.