Travel Advice: Mistakes in Medellin

The Mistakes in Medellin Post is part of The Quest Around The Globe Trip Report which covers the following places:

• Las Vegas, Nevada 
• Grand Cayman 
• Cartagena, Colombia
• Medellin, Colombia
• Miami, Florida 
• Houston, Texas 
• Moscow, Russia
• St. Petersburg, Russia 
• Ayia Napa, Cyprus 
• Amman, Jordan 
• Abu Dhabi, UAE 
• New York, New York 

Here is the Picture Preview, the Excel Spreadsheet of all the points redemptions, and my CNN International Business Traveller segment which was filmed in Vegas.

Vacations are supposed to be fun. Drama should be left at home. My time in Medellin was anything but drama free. A night of aguardiente resulted in losing my phone and more importantly all of the photos from Cartagena and Medellin that I use to write trip reports. In my 34 years, I have never lost my phone so I had to take a moment to reflect on this incident. The hassle of canceling the phone, getting a new phone, protecting my data, and having no way to communicate was more than an inconvenience. I also lost my ID and credit cards which was aggravating. I had many fraudulent charges and had to cancel the cards. The worst part was having to set up auto pay again on my bills and the headaches that come from that process.

I write this disclaimer to warn others who may get too excited while traveling as a reminder to stay safe and to be aware. It does not matter if you’ve traveled to 80 countries or this is your first time leaving the country. Danger is lurking around the corner. On a lighter note, the people who recovered my Blackberry Passport did not realize that my photos automatically sync to DropBox. Before wiping and disconnecting my phone, there were plenty of photos of them taking selfies with guns.

And now back to the fun.