Great first trip and taxi contact
Was in Medellin in November and had a great time. Stayed in Laureles and Poblado. Parque lleras is an experience and near by road. Wished the construction was completed though. Met another monger and hung out a few days. Checked out Gusto but won't be going back, priced both of us out as we could had stayed home for the price. Visited El Centro but didn't partake.
Overall it was fun and a great first experience!
Met an Uber driver who offered personal taxi and other services. He was willing to do mongering tours but I didn't take it up as I didn't have time. His brother has a boat on Guatape and seems like he helps throe parties or at least helps with logistics such as finding sites and girls. He knows some prepagos which I got their contact, but did not partake, again not enough time.
Never used his services but seems nice enough, speaks English pretty good. Feel free to PM me for his contact.
You can do this with any bank
[QUOTE=Villainy;2789879]You've mentioned this a few times and it makes no sense. Lower your daily withdrawal limit? When they withdraw money they see your balance (at least at most banks here). Which means they take out what they can and come back the next day and the next and the next until they have it all. What do they do with you? Keep you unconscious or just kill you.
The smart way to handle this, if it concerns you, is to have an account with Fidelity or Schwab. You keep your cash in the investment account. You transfer money to your bank account when you want to take money out at an ATM. If you were to get 'scoped' or kidnapped or something. They would take out the daily limit money but see the balance was almost gone. There wouldn't be any motivation to keep you after they got all the money. ATMs don't show balances in investment accounts at the same financial institution.
Same with a transaction limit on your credit card. Usually that means notification if your do more than 3 transactions in a day (or whatever you set it at) it doesn't mean you can't do 4 or 5. Even if your bank allows you to set a hard limit, that just means they wait a day to get a few more charges, and the next day and the next etc. BTW what do you want to do with your credit card anyway? Colombia is mostly a cash based economy. Prepay your hotel or place your are staying and pay cash for your restaurants, taxis, bar bills, etc. So what happens if there is an emergency and you need to buy a plane ticket or something else? Just transfer money from your investment account to your bank account and pay in cash. It shouldn't wreck your lifestyle if it happens to come up.
At the very least hide your damn credit card somewhere no one could ever find it. A lot of better hotels have a security box in the reception area (at my hotel it is like a safe deposit box). Put your card in an envelope and leave it there.
As to the passport. You call the American Embassy in Bogota and they will help you get an emergency passport. You won't be able to fly on a copy of our passport.[/QUOTE]You don't have to have schwab or fidelity to do what you are saying; you can use any bank in fact. I myself use Capital one. What you do is you open a checking and a Savings account but you only link the checking account to your debit card, not your Savings account, you can call the customer service at the bank to have it set up this way. Then you keep your big money in the non linked savings account and whenever you need to use the ATM just get on your banking app and transfer what you need from the savings to the checking and then withdrawal at the ATM. There used to be a limit of 6 transfers per month out of the savings account this used to be called Regulation the and they used to charge you a fee if you withdrew or transfered out more than 6 times per month, however that Regulation the was suspended as of 2021 because of Covid and it hasn't been reinstated, capital one even confirmed this when I called and asked about it. So you can make as many transfers out of the savings per month as you want. So don't be afraid to keep your thousands in that unlinked Savings account and just transfer and withdraw as needed. If anyone ever steals your debit card, the money in the savings will be untouchable (unless if they also stole your phone and had access to your banking app in which case you would be fucked). But you can minimize that by using a burner phone that doesn't have your banking app on it or just leaving the your phone at home / hotel or whatever.
And as Villlany noted alot of banks will show on the ATM receipt how much is avail in the account printed on the receipt, but when using this method it only shows how much is left available in the corrientes (checking) account and the ahorros (savings) option doesn't work or show anything, it will just give an error msg.
-Gabacho.