Blogs from Medellin, Colombia, South America - page 6

Let's Start Off With Some Good News... Jeff and I got married on June 14th! Jeff was planning to be in Medellin for the Pan American Master's Diving Championship, so I decided to tag along and extend our trip to Cartagena and make a honeymoon out of it. I actually kind of cringe at the "honeymoon" moniker as we have been together for almost 15 years and it wasn't as if we were embarking on a new life together, but regardless it feels good to have our relationship legally recognized now that Hawaii has passed marriage equality. Botero: The Noncriminal Son A visit to Medellin is not complete without viewing Fernando Botero's art and sculptures. On my first full day in Medellin, after Jeff established a new world record in master's 3M springboard, we trooped out ... read more

Well, today was one of those days when nothing goes quite as it should. The plan was to go up the cable car to Parque Arvi in the morning and back to downtown Medellín in the afternoon. This was my only day for sightseeing proper here as am doing another bus trip tomorrow. To get to the park you take two separate cable cars from one of the mainline metro stations. The first, which is included in the 50p fare, was built to link poor people living high up on one of the hills to the centre of the city in the valley. (There are other cable cars serving other slopes, although slope is too gentle a word). The first ride gives you a bird's eye view of poverty whereas the cable car to the park ... read more

Once I had left Bocas Del Toro, its beaches and the many Kosher shops, I made my way down to David and hopped onto a plane for Colombia. This was my final leg of the month-long trip and to be honest, I was more than ready to go home. For me, 3 weeks is sufficient for travelling. As the plane flew into Medellin and went through the clouds approaching the airport, I saw a very breath-taking site. We were flying through beautiful landscape, hills the size of mountains and villages propped up between them. It's hard to explain into words but this was the most stunning airport approach I've ever witnessed. Part of me thought it could be pretty dangerous flying through this terrain during the night ... a lot of reliance on electronic equipment. I ... read more

Music and Flowers Last night we had the pleasure of hearing the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in live performance just a few blocks from our house in Detroit. They are doing a Tchaikovsky Festival, with our own great music director Leonard Slatkin conducting. We heard it in Medellín through the magic of the internet; they are now broadcasting their performances electronically for the whole world. You yourself could connect, at http://www.dso.org/live.aspx . I take e-mail and blogging all for granted now, but the live performance of our own home boys somehow seemed extraordinary. Actually, it is all extraordinary. We are the first people in the history of civilization to experience this. Medellín is a wonderful place in many ways, but there is no orchestra or theater that we have been able to find. In all our travels, ... read more

The most famous person in Medellín, and maybe in all of Colombia, is an artist named Fernando Botero. He is probably more famous than the president. The National Museum devotes the entire third floor to his works, and spread out in front of the museum, on a long and broad plaza called Botero Park, are many of his monumental scuptures in bronze. If you have ever visited a big art museum in the U.S., you will probably recognize his absolutely unique style. We have a number of his works at the DIA in Detroit, but as just a few in with so many others, his works seem like oddities. Here you see so many that they start to seem normal. He claims to be a figurative artist in the renaissance tradition of El Greco, Botticelli, or ... read more