What an interesting an colorful city! Twenty years ago Medellin was perhaps the most dangerous city in the world. Today it’s a thriving community with modern public transportation and improving economy.
The Medellin airport is a 45 minute drive outside of town, or 35 minutes with our taxi driver (and there were no seatbelts!) We stayed on the 9th floor in a nice new one bedroom apartment in the Laureles district of Medellin, just a 10 minute walk to the Metro and 15 minutes walk to the soccer stadium.
As usual, we took a walking tour of Medellin on the first day. Our guide, Dio was perhaps the best walking tour guide we have ever had. He told us the story of Medellin, it’s sleeping beginnings, lack of strategic importance to the Spanish, the rise of the coffee industry and the wealth created, the smuggling industry bringing untaxed foreign alcohol and tobacco into Medellin area, which was later leveraged for the smuggling industry of bringing cocaine out of Colombia. This led to the rise of vicious drug gangs most of which were eventually united under Pablo Escobar.
FARC (left wing), right wing militias, government forces, drug gangs all combined to make Medellin the most violent and dangerous city in the world in the 70’s through 90’s. In the past 20 years, the city is has gone through a major transformation. While Colombia still produced about 80% of the coca in the world, the refinement and distribution and horrendous violence has moved from Colombia to Mexico. Good for Colombia, bad for Mexico, and all driven by demand, mostly in the US.
The downtown area of Medellin now has open plazas, public art and community offices in renovated, previously abandoned buildings. The city has built new social services, libraries and schools in poor neighborhoods to promote community pride and education. The transformation has been studied by city planners throughout the world.
Fernando Botero
We visited the Plaza Botero, where dozens of his bronze statues are located around the park. We also visited the neighboring Museo de Antioquia with many of his paintings, drawings and bronzes. His playful proportions and simplistic style make for memorable pieces. I went looking online for smaller replicas of his work, but was unwilling to pay $8,000 – $2,000,000.
Medellin Cable Cars and Parks
Medellin is located in a flat valley with relatively steep mountains to the east and west. The city extends up onto those mountains which are mainly poorer communities. In addition to two metro lines and a tram system on the valley floor, the city has connected public transportation into those mountainside communities by installing several cable car systems. We rode one from the Mira Flores Tram station to the end station in Comuna 8, where the streets are extremely steep and narrow.
An unexpected treat is a mountainside park (Jardin Circunvalar – Cinturon Verde) with walking paths along the mountainside and grand vistas over the city. The park was beautiful and well maintained. Unfortunately the valley was a bit hazy, so the pictures do not do justice to the view.
Botanical Gardens
We went to the botanical gardens, which was large and beautiful. We at the restaurant in the gardens, it was beautiful.
Medellin Futbal
We attended a soccer match between the Atletico Nacional team from Medellin and the Jaguars from Cordoba. We were in the east stands at about mid field, where the more orderly Atletico supporters watch the game. We could see and hear the crazies in the south stands who chanted, jumped up and down, played drums and waved flags and banners through the entire match. They weren’t even really watching the game, they had their own party. It started to drizzle in the second half, and we left before the end to avoid the crowds. Atletico won 3-1. Great fun.
Guatape and La Piedra
We signed up for a full day tour to go see the town of Guatape, climb all 675 steps up La Piedre “the rock” and take a boat ride on the lake. The other tourists in our group were mostly from other Latin American countries (DR, Ecuador, Paraguay, Panama) , but we met a couple from Washington DC with Vietnamese roots. It turns out the husband went through the refugee camp in Thailand where Susie worked on her mission. We also met a nice German guy who was living in Medellin while working remotely on his PhD.
Guatape is a picturesque town painted in vivid colors with 3-D wall murals. It is definitely a tourist town so lots of hats, keychains, bars, restaurants jewelry etc. It was a fun but long day.
Comuna 13
We attended church on Sunday and then took a guided walking tour of Commune 13, a previously poor and dangerous mountainside neighborhood, now a success story as a safe tourist destination due to it’s wall murals, shops, dancers and a string of 6 outdoor escalators up the mountainside. Since Monday was a state holiday, the place was packed with tourists, many of them young Western tourists.
Parque Explora
On our last day we went to this wonderful hands-on science place. Great displays and learning exhibits. The aquarium/terrarium portion has some great displays of reptiles (boa, anaconda and pythons), amphibians, freshwater and salt water life. We saw a lot of things we had never seen before. We stayed until closing.
A couple more videos from Medellin. These were both taken from our apartment balcony. Every morning, we loved hearing the morning fruit cart go by. Turn on sound.
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