Medellin

Metrocable

I met Steve at an empanada stand after taking a series of incorrect busses to visit the Metrocable. He overheard me fumbling with Spanish, trying to comprehend the appropriate route, and offered to show me the way. This is one of the most annoying and frequent hit-ups for money that a gringo encounters in Colombia, besides a simple "hey you, give me money." But Steve had a different aura. He didn't want anything. He had pure eyes, and I sensed good intent. So off we went, stopping at the botanical gardens along the way.

Medellin Jardin Botanical

Medellin is clean, calm, cultured, and cool. Artsy, contemporary fountains and sculptures decorate the metropolitan plazas and parks. The local water company funds many of the urban parks, Steve told me, in an initiative to constantly better the city and purify its residual karma from the '90s. Steve's girlfriend met up with us and we all rode the rail to the Metrocable. Most cities shun their slums, neurotically trying to forget about them like a be-fungused hang nail. Instead, Medellin gifted the Santa Domingo barrio with a multi-million dollar sky tram and uber-modern library, which looks like a medieval castle.

Bibliotheca Espana

We checked the place out. A group of young school kids waited in line for the internet lab.
"Hey you," one kid said. "Hey you."
"HEY YOU!" I said, giving him a look so freakish he'll probably pee a little every time he thinks of hey-youing anybody ever again.

I went back to the Black Sheep hostel and did the most American thing I could muster. I drank a Coca-Cola. The new Batman movie played, followed by Hotel Rwanda - both heady contemplations on the nature of evil and humanity. I nodded off to sleep for a long time, lamenting the absolute absence of justice in this mad world.

The next morning I went to a store for a needle and thread to patch a hole in the crotch of my pants which I'd neglected to attend to for a week. Back at the hostel, the maid saw me struggling to do anything functional with my new stitch set, and without a word took over the job, sealing the hole up, smiling, with a few deft strokes and a knot. I wanted to kiss her.

Then I met up with Steve and his girlfriend, and off we went to Pueblito Paisa, the quintessential old town of Medellin. Pueblito Paisa sits atop a hill in the middle of the city, with an enchanting panoramic view of red brick townships creeping up the valley walls onto the mountainsides. Steve pointed out various regions of the city, telling me of how Pablo Escobar had blown the place to ruins with random bombings in the 1980's in order to dissuade the Colombian government from extraditing him to the U.S.

Pueblito Paisa

Escobar, that notorious kingpin of the Colombian drug trade, was the seventh richest man in the world until one fateful day in 1993, when police forces finally shot him down. And you can bet they were happy to do it - Escobar paid handsomely to anyone who brought him the body of a police man, a move which brought the homicide rate in 1991 to eleven times that of Chicago.

We climbed down the hill and continued on to Parque de los Pies Descalzos, an urban plot with a flowing foot pool of water and a therapeutic sandbox, meant to relax he barefooted sojourner. Medellin is hip and progressive. You don't see the rouge eddies of garbage swirling on the wind, common to Barranquilla. And you are hard up to find trees decorated with discarded plastic bags like the lifeless remains of landlocked flying jellyfish, such as you'd see in Taganga. Medellin has a green thumb, and a knack for art. The best example of this is the Plazo Botero.

Fernando Botero was an artist who flourished in fifties, creating sculptures and paintings of weird fat things which have come to typify Colombia art. He explained his fat-knack thusly: "An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it."

Botero Scultpure

People on the plaza were constantly asking for money - some of them performing, some demanding, others grossly disfigured in one way or another and simply holding out a hand. The poverty in Colombia is heartbreaking and ubiquitous. An estimated 60% of the urban population and an unbelievable 80% of the rural population are believed to live beneath the poverty line. The paisas (people from Medellin), Steve told me, are known across Colombia for being clever, persistent merchants and money-makers, always finding a way to subsist during hard times.

That much was very apparent as we shelled out small change and loose bills for the forlorn eyes of Plazo Botero.

Plazo Botero - fat is back

That night I went out to a couchsurfing party and met the local group, who were very helpful in offering advice about how to teach English in Medellin. We sipped rum and celebrated the birthday of an Argentinian named Nacho on the top floor of a restaurant.

written by  chaddeal on February 26, 2009 from Medellin, Colombia
from the travel blog: The Great Pan-American Synchronistic Cycle Extravaganza Unlimited
Send a Compliment

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Hey.. really fast.. a few hours i meet you and now i´m in your blog.. i like it.. good writing.. see u soon.. Steve

written by  Steve Arias on February 26, 2009

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