After one of the tastiest meals I had eating in South America, my mum was on a plane back to the USA to continue her retirement on American soil. I jumped on a plane the next morning to get the stamps for my fifth country, Colombia. I chose to fly up to Medellin instead of busing so that I could have a travel buddy reunion. Also, at this point I was pretty tired of super long bus rides. Sitting still is hard.
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| MINE |
When I say Colombia, who do you think of? Pablo Escobar? Shakira? That seems to be the general response. That or a comment about cocaine, drugs or getting kidnapped. I can ASSURE you that the Medellin I spent time in was nothing like what people seem to think. It is a clean safe city that I could easily see myself living in if I decided that South America is the continent for me. Also they have a neighborhood called Los Laureles, one of the up and coming trendy neighborhoods in the city. Woohoo.
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| Hostel cat. |
Does this mean that Colombia no longer has problems with violence, poverty or drugs? Of course not, but it is nowhere near the levels or the complexity of an issue that it was in the mid-'90s.
I had heard that the walking tour of Medellin was one the best, so we took it on our first day. It's four hours long and I enjoyed it immensely. No, its not a Pablo Escobar tour. His brother leads an expensive one that's basically that. This covered a much more broad history of the city and its complexities as well as its reclamation of areas that used to be full of violence and drugs.
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| Trying tasty fried foods |
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| Guinea pig gambling: place your money on a bucket and if he goes in that bucket you win! |
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| This old church is also confusingly a popular place to go to find prostitutes |
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| Beer carts wandering the main footpath |
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| An awesome example of an art project that was used to take back a really sketchy area. It's a main plaza downtown that used to be full of drugs and crime. After providing shelter for the homeless and clearing out the area, the art is used to give it a positive connotation and bring people back to the area. |
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| Fruit carts. Some vendors use microphones to announce their noms. |
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| Posing with some Botero. Botero is an artist from Medellin who played lots with volume and proportions. |
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| More Botero. |
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| They closed out the tour showing us this Botero sculpture. A grenade was placed in it and it killed 30 people and injured 200 more in 1995. |
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| Commemorating those lost |
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| Botero insisted that instead of taking down the original statue, he would create a second one to stand along side it as a memory of healing and optimism. |
Paisas (people from this area) are an especially proud people, as the rest of Colombians will tell you. They take pride in their culture and their city. They have a metro that connects the north and the south of the city. It's incredibly clean. They have so much pride in it that no one vandalizes or even drops garbage on it. Not kidding. This includes two cable cars that allow access to the city center for some of the poorer neighborhoods up in the hills. It's a longer commute, but it costs the same is you would pay to go three stops in the center. This really makes commerce and employment in the heart of the city more accessible to everyone.
In the USA, when I see an area full of police, I immediately wonder what just happened and why the police are there. In South America and particularly in Colombia, the presence of lots of police (and police dogs) has a positive connotation. These police patrols are to demonstrate that the area is a safe place to be. Its an area that's safe for tourists and businesses.
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| There are people pushing these carts all around the parks. You can get little cups of coffee, snacks or any manner of things. (Also... when you see the butt. Sorry.) |
The next day, we took the cable care up to one of the neighborhoods and wandered around. While the view from the cable car was great, I definitely remembered I don't like being up that high. No thank you.
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| Too high! |
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| Gringo exploration |
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| Going up and down those stairs... no thanks. It's actually very isolating for some neighborhoods. It's not easy to go up and down a large number of stairs for all of your necessities. |
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| Medellin is in a very large valley |
There are no open container laws in Colombia, so that night I met up with a Colombian girl I traveled with in Nepal. (Small world eh?) We met up for beers in the park. The park we went to was full of younger students (I think) all sitting around drinking booze and chatting. It was a great evening.
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| Chillin' in the park |
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| This is a (not delicious) Colombian alcohol that tastes like black licorice and fire. Oh and they serve it in juice boxes. |
The next couple days were full of wandering around the city and trying foods I hadn't seen before in South America. Colombians have some interesting combinations. That's for sure. One of the traditional dishes is basically a heart attack on a place. Beans, rice, chorizo, fried pork belly, avocado and a fried egg. All on one plate. Bandeja Paisa. Nom nom (said like three or four people).
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| Guava paste and queso (quesito?) |
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| DESSERT. Like tiramisu kinda, but many flavors. |
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| Oblea. It's like a waffle cone cracker with cheese and caramel and/or sprinkles inside. |
