Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
I travelled from Salento to Medellin with an Israeli guy Nir who was also staying in my hostel in Salento, and we arrived in the evening, with just enough time to shower before happy hour hit the bar! There I first experienced the delights of cold showers and showers without shower head, which are basically just a stream of cold water, pretty much present everywhere in North Colombia! I also discovered the joys of aguardiente, a pretty strong and not particularly nice local alcoholic spirit which is clear and aniseed flavoured and you do shots of, which the barman at our hostel was giving out copious amounts of for free on our first night!
So Medellin's kind of a weird city. It has a great public transport metro system, with some cable car systems that connect onto it to go up to the top of the hills over the favelas which was interesting to ride up to the top of as it was free with your metro ticket, and look down over the favela. The city centre is a crazy blast of fluorescence everywhere! It seems you're not cool in Medellin unless you have at least ONE ridiculously bright item of clothing, but preferably matching colourful top, bag AND shoes, or belt, sunglasses, the list could be endless, and it doesn't just stop at the clothes! All the shops in the city centre seem to be half shop half market stall, and everything is in crazy bright and fluorescent colours, from cups and coat hangers to trainers and high heels. I'm not dissing it, I personally don't think there's enough fluoro in the world, and it certainly brightens up this city!
They also have the plazoleta de lasesculturas which is a square covered in sculptures by Colombian sculptor Fernando botero, which are all large black statues of fat naked people, fat horses, various other fat animals, and a huge church covered In ambiguously coloured tiles, which I have decided were black and white, although me, Dav and Simon spent a long time arguing about whether they were in fact grey, green, yellow, purple… The night life in Medellin is pretty good too, although strangely quiet, I'm not sure whether that's just the time of year? And you can spend a good night hopping between the bars and clubs til about 5 in the morning (which we did!)
Of course I couldn't leave Medellin without doing the Pablo Escobar tour! It takes you from the building that used to be the head office of his cocaine business, but was bombed and still remains as a ruined building, to the graveyard where he's buried on a large plot with his bodyguard and parents, to his brother Roberto's house, which used to be one of Pablo's many houses, which still contains a lot of relics from his life. His fist car and motorbike are there, as well as desks with pull out secret compartments where he used to store stashes of cocaine, and secret hiding holes behind bookcases that swing open, for when the police came calling. There are also bullet holes through the wall and glass door and paintings, NOT in fact where Pablo was shot at, but where his brother Roberto and his youngest son were shot at in an attempted kidnapping to try and get hostage money! They show you the documentary which has been made about his life, and Nacional, the football team which him and his family were heavily involved in, and meet his brother Roberto, who is half deaf and blind from an explosion that happened right next to him, and ask him questions about their lives. It turns out that although many people died in the war between the government and Pablo's cartel, he wasn't all bad, as he paid for the housing of many poor and homeless Colombian people, so although many Colombians hate Pablo for the reputation he gave their country and the people who died because of his war, many poor people still see him as a Robin Hood style hero who provided them with great housing!
- comments