Medellin, Colombia

I took the night bus from Santa Marta to Medellin. I’ve read how dangerous the night buses are in Colombia. Everyone says this is when the bus will be hijacked and, if it isn't, then all your belongings will certainly be stolen by people on the bus. On the way to the bus station I was just a bit nervous, but it was 14 hours and I could save the money I’d spend on a hotel room for the night. I got on bus and it was half full of gringos, most of them looking much more like tourists them me, I was done worrying. I settled in, read a bit, watched some Spanish TV, that was blaring most of the night. Just before I left I grabbed a sweatshirt, I may have died if I hadn’t The bus was like a rolling walk in cooler. At one point I almost ripped off the curtain to use as a blanket. I was dreading my first long bus ride, but in the end, it wasn’t too bad. I had the row to myself, got a decent night’s sleep and woke to some amazing scenery. Cute little towns, surrounded my mountains, rivers and jungles.

I got into Medellin early on Saturday morning. I walked around for a bit looking for a hostel. Most were booked and ended up in more of a hotel. It was nice, kind of quiet, but right in the heart of the Poblado. This is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Medellin, and is where the Zona Rosa is located. Zone Rosa is not the red light district, which I thought is what meant when I first saw the term. It’s the part of a Colombian city where most of the bars, cafes and restaurants are located. It was a really cool area….lots of parks, trails, restaurants and outdoor cafes. It felt a bit like soho or greenwich village in nyc.

After getting some lunch and walking around a bit, I met a friend from Taganga. He was also taking classes at the Spanish school and had just gotten a job teaching at an American school in northern Colombia. We went out on the town later that night, had some dinner and went to check out the nightlife. We were both tired from the trip in, so it was a pretty early night.

The next morning I went into the centro, checked out a few plazas and markets. Found a great little hole in the wall for lunch. Lunches here, almuerzos, are the best. For $1 or 2 you get a big bowl of delicious soup (although it’s occasionally made with some random animal parts like tripe or other unidentifiable organs), rice, beans, plantains, salad, meat and fresh fruit juice. I also checked out the botanic gardens, as impressive as I have seen anywhere else in the world (not that I have seen that many, but it was nice). After lunch, I walked around the city some more and checked out some cool Botero statues in one of the main plazas.

The city spreads from north to south with the barrios, mostly ghettos, sprawling up the hills on either side of the valley. The city has a train/ light rail that runs the length of the city. It’s very clean, efficient and pretty cheap. I was amazing at how metropolitan Medellin was. The city is very clean and, for the most part, I always felt very safe, even in some of the sketchier neighborhoods of the centro.

The next day Justin and I took the train out to see Pablo Escobar’s grave. It was actually a bit anticlimactic, it was a nice headstone, but otherwise pretty average. There were some flowers there, but I expected more for the largest kingpin in the world as well as the guy responsible for building Medellin and making it the wealthy city that it is today. It’s pretty interesting talking to locals about their feelings for Pablo. They all acknowledge that he did so much for the people of Colombia. He built schools, parks, hospitals, museums, stadiums and sponsored sports teams for kids. Everyone also says they certainly don’t miss the problems with la violencia. It’s crazy that he once offered to pay all the debt of the Colombian government if they refused to extradite him to the US. It’s also easy to forget that also of people I meet down here lived through those years and many of their family members were killed in the wars. For me, it usually stills feels like that was all just a Hollywood movie.

That night Justin and I went out with a friend of his that lived here and her sister. We had a few drinks and Justin and I did our best with our lack of Spanish. Both of us really should have studied much harder in Taganaga. A few of their friends met us and we all went to a disco. We had to go through a metal detector and were patted down before getting into the club and we were the only two gringos there the entire night. Everyone was very cool, though. We all had a great time drinking rum, dancing (I use that term very liberally for me) and just having a good time.

The next day I rode the cable car to the top of the mountain. The cable car was built to give the people in the barrio a chap and quick way into the city. Traditionally, the neighborhoods get worse the higher you go on the hills. In Pablo’s days the area was called something like the cradle of death. This is where he recruited and trained his killing squad. The area, like most of Colombia, is changing quickly. A beautiful new library was recently built near the top and lots of the neighborhoods are being cleaned up.

I took the car to the top of the mountain, it was like riding the gondola in Steamboat, only you get off and are looking what were the slums of Colombia rather then waist deep powder. I got off and walked around a bit. I actually liked it up there, people were very nice and it felt like they were real neighborhoods. Kids were running around playing, old people were working on their houses and the streets were filled with tiendas, butchers, etc.. I can’t imagine how different it must have been a few years ago.

I decided my last day in Medellin would be my Anthony Bourdain tour. I got up early and went to the Plaza Minorista and found the A Que Ricura (Oh, How Good!) restaurant. The little old lady that worked there was really sweet,. I was trying to understand her verbal menu, basically saying yes to everything she said. Then she said something about Bourdain, in an almost indecipherable accent. I said, “si, si!!. She smiled and brought me a plate of food. Avery large plate of food. Rice, beans (with pork), coleslaw-ish salad, plantains, French friends, a friend egg and a big piece of steak. And a strong cup of coffee. It wasn’t even 9 in the morning and I was about to consume more food then most people eat in a day. Ah Que Ricura!!

After breakfast it was either right back to bed, go immediately to the cardiac ward of the closest hospital or take a walk. My hotel was pretty far, so sleeping wasn’t really an option and although I heard Colombia has very good hospitals, I really try to avoid hospitals at all costs, no matter what country I’m in. Especially the states. Anyway, I decided to take a walk through the market.

Plaza Minorista is the central market for Medellin. You can find anything and everything in here. Clothes, tv’s, refrigerators, produce, eggs, live animals and every part of a dead animal you could imagine. There were whole cows hanging from racks, guys cutting them apart. Butcher cases full of organs. There were almost little neighborhoods within the market. Dozens of butches next to each other, then rows and rows of produce vendors, then rows of people selling clothes or electronics. People running in every direction, getting food and supplies for their restaurant or shop.