Medellin
First thing in the morning of the 1st October,
the day we were due to leave Cartagena, I received an email saying our flight
to Medellin
was being moved to 3rd October. We were soon up and at the airport
to have words about this…not only was the airline changing the date by 2 days,
instead of going direct which would take an hour, the new flight would take 12
hours and be going via Bogota! Turned out most of the airline’s flights were
cancelled due to strike action and although we had to hang around for 7 hours
at the airport, we were lucky enough to get on the only other direct flight to
Medellin that day, whereas most people didn’t get to travel at all.
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| Medellin |
Anyway, we made it finally, and what a respite from the heat
of Cartagena. Medellin is in the Paisa
region of Colombia, in the north west of the country, further inland than
Cartagena, cooler and mountainous. People from Medellin complain about not
being near the sea, but the region is lush, green and beautiful.
I got an email from my mum who has been going a bit nuts
since I arrived in Latin America; when she found out we were off to Medellin,
it rang a bell in her mind and she looked it up in the Pears Encyclopaedia
which has been gathering dust on their shelf since circa 1980. All the info on
Medellin would have been about corruption, guerrilla warfare, kidnapping,
homicide and narco-trafficking, which means her stress levels were off the scale
while I’m here. I’m convinced she recognises the name of the city from bottles
of rum.
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| Palacio de la Cultura |
Up until around the early 90s, Medellin was the most
dangerous city in the world, and yes, mummy would have been right to be
freaking out. With approx 6000 homicides per year between 1990 and 1993, the
city didn’t get many foreign visitors and the UK government’s website would
have been covered with dire warnings about travelling to Colombia, particularly
Medellin. It’s also the birth and death place of the ‘famous criminal’, Pablo
Escobar, which resulted in much of the notoriety of this city.
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| Death of Escobar by Botero |
Things have changed a bit since the 90s. Although it’s far
from being the most violent city in the world as it once was, Medellin
definitely remembers and retains its tragic past and today many families are
still searching for answers and justice for their murdered or missing family
and friends. It has quite a different feel from other cities in Colombia – we
were struck by how much more developed
it was.
Rumour has it that Escobar pumped money into his hometown making it
much more affluent than other places in the country, but this has been debunked
as myth. Medellin was the first Colombian city to undergo an industrial
revolution, introducing a railway in 1929 long before the rest of the rural
country caught up. This would have contributed vastly to the development and
infrastructure of the city. It’s also the only city in the country with a metro
system, and it’s spotless.
Medellin sits in a valley surrounded by mountains, and there
are many high points which can be reached for fantastic views over the city.
The city sprawl is plain to see; many older buildings were demolished to make
way for more up to date architecture, much of it red brick.
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| Top of Cerro Nutibara |
On our first day we visited Cerro
Nutibara, one of the best places for city views. Here there is a reproduction
of a traditional ‘pueblo’ or town on top of a hill with a picture postcard square,
teeny church and brightly coloured buildings. We spent about an hour here –
there wasn’t a great deal to do once we’d taken photos of the view. The museum
is undergoing a refurbishment so most of it was shut.
We strolled back down towards the city through the nature
paths and walked a couple of kilometres to the Museo
de Antioquia, which sits on the edge of Plaza
de Botero. The museum is actually an art gallery and much of it contains
the work of another famous son of Medellin, artist Fernando
Botero. The entry fee was 18,000 Pesos and we spent a couple of hours
wandering around it. The artwork was fabulous, but the building was pretty
interesting too.
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| Plaza de Botero sculpture |
In the plaza, there are a number of large bronze Botero
sculptures – his work is famously not in perspective and most of his figures are
grossly obese. The backdrop to the square is Rafael Uribe's Palacio
de la Cultura. This lovely building was designed by a Belgian architect who
got so much grief from the locals about the building, he quit halfway through
construction and it was never properly finished. The Colombians couldn’t make
head nor tail of his design, so they built a wall in front of what had already
been built.
After ducking into the Candelaria
Church, we made for the hotel before the thunderstorm (we were too late). Interestingly,
right next to the church are several hardcore porn DVD sellers.
The following morning we were on our free city walking tour,
with Real
City Tours. This was a fabulous 4 hour tour of the downtown area – much of
what we’d seen the day before, albeit with a local’s insight. Our guide, Hernan
was an incredibly smart guy. His English was perfect and he immediately
remembered everyone’s names. He gave us a fantastic insight into the history of
the city and the country, pre-dating the Spanish conquest, up until the present
day. I think a lot of tourists come to Medellin to learn about Escobar, and
Hernan purposely didn’t spend too much time on this subject, although it
inevitably came up because it had a big impact on the city. We learned about
the civil
warfare that has affected the country so greatly in the past, including the
extreme left-wing guerrilla groups, the extreme right-wing paramilitary groups
and the government corruption, all of which is slowly disappearing, changing
the country for the better.
The tour was a bit of a ‘warts and all’ circuit around the
city, and we found the prostitutes hanging out next to the church, the drug addicts,
and the pickpockets. Hernan told us about religion in Colombia and how it is
primarily Catholic. Some Colombians use their religion as a way to be absolved
of their sins, so the guys visiting prostitutes next to the church would pop in
after doing the nasty, and seek forgiveness. The hitman would firstly go and
pray to the Virgin Mary and confess what he was about to do, saying that if the
bullet found its target, it was because Mary wanted it to reach it, if not then
Mary didn’t want it to hit the target. It wouldn’t be the hitman’s fault then
would it!?
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| Manners cost nothing |
On the next day we set off to Arvi
Park. This is a huge park north of the city and after taking the metro to
Acedevo, we had to then pick up the metro cable car to San Domingo, changing again
to get another cable car to Arvi. From the centre of Medellin we paid about
5000 Pesos each to San Domingo (one way), and then a further 5,200 Pesos from
there to Arvi, one way. The cable car was amazing and really puts our piddly
London one to shame. The first line is nearly 2km long and the views over the
city are spectacular. It climbs very high so it is quite steep and at some
points it flies along pretty quickly.
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| Arvi cable car |
The park itself was a bit touristy, with a gift shop,
overpriced café, the usual. It had some interesting treks though, including the
archaeological circuit, and the flora trek among others. We spent a couple of
hours there, walking through the park, and chatting to local craft and food
sellers. It took about an hour to get to the park but it was easy on public
transport, but the cable car made the trip worthwhile.
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| Guatape |
Up early the next morning to go to Guatape
which is a little town about 2 hours east of Medellin. Guatape itself is a
really picturesque little place but the main reason for tourists to make the
70-odd kilometre journey on the winding roads is to climb the nearby rock, El
Peñol, or La Piedra. There are a couple of organised day trips that leave
from Medellin, but then you’re obliged to stop where the tour stops and eat
where the tour wants you to. We didn't take a tour, instead opting for the local bus. Out trip was easy, we took a metro to Caribe, then walk over
the footbridge to Terminal Norte, to ticket counter 22 where we paid 27,000
Pesos for 2 of us, one way.
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| La Piedra |
The huge rock is over 2000m above sea level, has over 650 steps
to the top, and then there are another 100 or so steps up to the viewing tower
built on top of it. The views were fabulous; we could see right across the
region, which is quite rural but has several lakes and islands surrounding the
rock. We paid 18,000 Pesos each to get in, and it only took about 20 minutes to
climb El Peñol, but it was fairly steep, and on the way down you actually take
some interior stairs which are even worse. I was more giddy going down than
going up. We had lunch in Guatape, and wandered round the pretty town.
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| La Piedra |
The charming town was really colourful - most of the buildings have murals or bas-reliefs on them,
usually depicting something about the town such as donkeys or the rock, but
some have random pictures like the Pink Panther. The weather in Guatape wasn’t
great but the rain held off while we climbed the rock. There are boat trips and
adventure sports such as paragliding which could be done in better weather, and
there are several hostels around the town, so I think it would be quite a nice
spot to stay for a couple of nights when the weather is better. We headed back
to town in the evening though, as we were heading back to Bogotá the next
morning, to take a connecting flight to Brazil!
#medellin #guatape #botero #cerronutibara #arvipark #escobar
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