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Published: December 4th 2008
The '80s and '90s were a tough time for the Medellin tourist board, with the city's murder and kidnapping rates during that period being some of the highest in the world. Pablo Escobar's cocaine cartel, engaged in a bloody war with both its main rival in Cali and the Colombian government, had made their leader's name synonymous with the city. $10 assassins riding on the backs of motorbikes were so common at one stage that the government banned pillion passengers. Foreigners on the streets were likely to be assumed to be DEA.
A decade later, though, Medellin has made determined efforts to project a different face to the world, a face that was always there but which was obscured by the violence of the druglords, guerrillas and paramilitaries. The weather that gave Medellin its nickname of the "City of Eternal Spring" has stayed springlike throughout. The work ethic, ingenuity, and friendliness of its people (known as paisas) did not change during Escobar's reign. The murder rate is down to a tenth of what it was. All that remains is for the rest of the world to take note.
My initial attempts at finding accommodation proved to be highly frustrating.
Peacock
Jardin BotanicoThe taxi driver couldn't find the first hostel (so much for the calle/carrera street layout being straightforward to understand), the second one on my list appeared to be empty as no-one answered my many rings at the door, and the next two were full.
My eventual abode was more like a frat house, and seemingly had attracted every football-loving American male within the borders of Colombia. The owner was an alumnus of Clemson and all aspects of the hostel, from its name to its colour scheme to the name of the resident cat, were tributes to Clemson's football team. My observations of the other guests were that they were either engaged in playing online poker, attempting to chat up local women, or discussing call-out services (and I don't mean food). I'm always suspicious of places that attract just one nationality, as that seems to be counter to the whole point of travelling.
I was also paying twice the price for my room as I'd paid anywhere else in Colombia, but this was due to the hostel's location in the Zona Rosa. This is an upmarket area of town - "high society" as my cab driver had called it
Parque de la Luz
Plaza de Cisneros in the only English that had escaped his lips in our hostel-hunting trek - and at night it filled with foreigners and monied locals. It was frustrating that to get away from Colombian cuisine you had to pay at least 5 times as much. I found a semi-sensibly priced establishment called Cafe Le Bon on the main plaza in the Zona Rosa, which had dishes named after Rod Stewart, Pavarotti, and Janis Joplin, an eclectic grouping that made even less sense if the cafe's name came from the lead singer of Duran Duran. The area was busy every night of the week, but the few snatches of '80s music and even a bit of Italo were heavily outnumbered by local rhythms, which I have yet to gain a liking for.
The weather certainly had enough sun and warmth for spring, bar the occasional afternoon downpour. This had made possible some extremely pleasant botanical gardens, including a cactus display as well as a special building for orchids. The gardens were also filled with wire decorations consisting of brightly coloured foil and illuminations in the shapes of flowers and animals, which I assumed were there in preparation for the Festival of
Orchid
Orquideorama, Jardin Botanico Lights that takes place in December (though I couldn't quite figure out how anyone would get to see them, as the gardens close at 5PM, i.e. before nightfall). There were also a few non-decorative animals such as lizards, tortoises, and a kingfisher.
Public transport includes the country's only metro system, which runs overland and is cheap, clean, frequent, and not crowded. It also includes a couple of cable cars that have successfully helped integrate some of the poorer communities up on the hillsides with the city as a whole. I took a ride on one of these cable cars up to the barrio of Santo Domingo, where the discovery of dead bodies was a frequent occurrence in the Escobar years, with views of drying laundry and corrugated roofs held down with stones. From the top, it was pretty much impossible to see downtown due to the smog, a side-effect of having half the country's industry in the city. However there is obvious wealth in Medellin, and I saw several malls that were indistinguishable from ones in the US.
Closer to the centre of town there were also many lights and decorations being put up in time for Christmas,
Window
Poblado though there were a good few sights to visit anyway. Plaza de Cisneros reminded me of the Games Memories installation in Sydney's Olympic Park. An amazingly large and complex sculpture outside of the nearby government building, supposedly representing the history of the province of Antioquia, echoed the similarly bizarre Peter the Great monument in Moscow. One of Medellin's most famous sons is Fernando Botero, whose work is characterised by the corpulence of its subjects. His bronzes in particular can be found around the world, and Medellin has about 30 dotted around the city with the highest concentration being in the Plaza de Esculturas. In the nearby Parque San Antonio is his Bird bronze, the original of which was caught in the blast of a guerrilla bomb that killed 23 people in 1995 - he erected a new, identical version of the sculpture defiantly next to the remains of the original. It's strange to see these enormous works of art in public, nonchalantly leaned upon by assorted idlers, as Botero's work goes for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction - but then again it's unlikely anyone could just lug one off.
Of course Botero's connection with Medellin is overshadowed
by that of Pablo Escobar. Escobar and his associates built a cocaine empire that led to him being included in the top 10 of Forbes' list of richest people in the world. His ruthlessness was encapsulated in his policy of "Money or lead" - if a politician, judge or policeman refused to be bribed, he would have them killed. He ensured he had a popular base in the city's poor by cultivating a Robin Hood image, building churches and financing housing projects. A barrio of Medellin is named after him. Though his death in 1993 certainly didn't spell the end of the drug trade in Colombia, it did rid Medellin of the violence that had accompanied his business dealings.
Not surprisingly, there are few signs of Escobar visible in the more-touristed parts of the city, though I wasn't sure if that was the tourist board's doing or not. One of the museums contains a Botero painting of Escobar's death, and you can visit his grave and also the country estate where he was self-imprisoned for just over a year in return for avoiding extradition to the US. The cocaine business is obviously still a highly lucrative one - after
Detail
Monumento a la Raza, Centro Administrativo La Alpujarra Escobar's death, control shifted to the Cali cartel until that too was dismantled, and now there are many smaller cartels receiving protection from the various guerrilla and paramilitary groups around the country. The building boom in Medellin has been cited as one vast money laundering operation for the current druglords, and the ongoing idealistic struggles between the FARC, ELN, etc and the government are in part financed by drug money. Escobar may be gone but the industry he worked in is still very much alive.
Many anthropology textbooks have posited that Medellin is fair dripping with totty. It certainly helps that the climate is conducive to skimpy attire, and the popularity of plastic surgery (actually in the country as a whole) has assisted in the tottification of portions of the female population. The night scene, watched from over my Rod Stewart salad, revealed a demographic that had put significant effort into its appearance.
Medellin is comfortably one of the most pleasant cities I've seen in South America, a fact I mulled over as I celebrated my 3 year travelling anniversary at Cafe Le Bon. Sadly I didn't feel up to taking advantage of what rumour says is its
amazing nightlife - with Quito still fresh in my mind, nocturnal wanderings are not my favourite activity at the moment, especially on my own, so that will have to wait until a future visit.
With December fast approaching, and a flight out of Buenos Aires awaiting in the middle of that month, I made my way next to Bogota.
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Daz
non-member comment
A fellow blog writer...
Hi, nice blog with a bit of history too. Im in Medellin right now and its a fantastic place. Shame you didnt sample the night life, its one of the best I have seen in 2 years of travelling. Keep up the blogs and becareful in Bogota - like Quito it can be dodgy at night ;-)