We were up around 05:00 this morning.  Crystal had Hungarian class at 06:00, and so Justin walked uphill to Mirador Poblado.  Medellín is anything but flat, so it was a bit of a workout.  When he got back and Crystal’s class was over, we had breakfast upstairs at the hotel restaurant.  They had a tasty soup, which reminded us of breakfast soup in Palau back in 2015, and we wondered why we don’t just have a big pot in our house to have for breakfast.

At 08:00 we met Danna and our driver, John.  We went across town to Comuna 13, formerly one of the most dangerous places on the planet, but now a touristy and safe neighborhood.  To explain how this all came to pass, Danna gave us a history lesson on Medellin and Colombia generally.  As best as we can recall from what she told us, the general population wasn’t too thrilled with the two parties that were options for voters in the 1950s, as no matter the party, the politicians were all fairly chummy social elites that didn’t resonate with the public.  

So a new party, the PCC, was formed to organize peasants and other poorer individuals.  This new party was met less-than-kindly by the government and the wealthy in Colombia.  There was quite a bit of violence, and there was a military attack in 1964 where 16,000 troops came to Marquetalia (run/governed by PCC members), which had only 1000 inhabitants.  48 of these inhabitants were armed, and managed to escape, and out of these 48 individuals FARC was formed, to be a militant force against government attacks.  In short order, however, FARC ran low on money, and drove people out of rural areas so they could plant coca plantsto make and sell cocaine to finance their activities.  

Many thousands of these refugees moved to Comuna 13, way up on a steep hillside on the western edge of Medellín.  Because of the neighborhood’s proximity to a major road heading to the northwest (we never figured out how/why this was important), guerillas moved into the already overpopulated Comuna 13 and basically took control of it.  The government wanted them gone, but figured it would be bad PR to send in the military to a residential neighborhood in the country’s second largest city, so instead hired the paramilitary to fight the guerillas, and the neighborhood was caught in the crosshairs for years.  As it turns out, Pablo Escobar didn’t really have anything to do with this neighborhood, his deal was (mostly) separate.  The war with FARC largely ended around 15-20 years ago, and officially ended in 2016.  Nowadays Comuna 13 is very touristy.

We met a local guide for Comuna 13, Sara, just before arriving to the neighborhood.  She gave us even more information, as well as some personal history, as her family grew up very close by.  The last little bit of our commute took an extra-long time, as we got stuck behind a garbage truck on a narrow street.  Once we finally got out of the vehicle, we walked along some sort of promenade that was (mostly) flat cutting across the hillside, with part of the neighborhood above us and part below us.  There was evidence of a thriving economy everywhere.  We asked whether a poor neighborhood becoming touristy caused an influx of outsider money to drive up housing costs and basically drive out the remaining locals.  We were glad to hear that the answer is no, essentially no one had sold to commercial enterprises, so all the people who had it so bad for so many years aren’t getting priced out of their own neighborhood now that it is in vogue. 

We stopped at several pieces of street art, where Sara explained the significance to us.  Certain imagery is commonplace, with one example being hummingbirds (colibrí) to represent loved ones, past and present.  There was one large mural (the panoramic shot above) that was intended to depict the long war, with beetles being the tanks, some birds being helicopters, the gold/blue/red flowers being the flag (with blood dripping from the bottom), the holes in the leaves being bullet holes, and probably some more things that we can’t recall.

After going down some escalators (they were installed around 30 years ago, to the anger of the local residents, who would’ve much preferred anything else), we stopped for a bit to watch a break dancing show.  It was incredible, especially when some young boy (maybe 8-10 years old) who was sitting right in front of us got up and danced his ass off to the surprise of everyone.  After going down some more stairs, we finally got to a spot where cars were possible again, and we took a short right over to Casa Kolacho.  It is a sort-of community center for youth in the neighborhood, with a lot of focus on street art and music, and has a bunch of walls for practicing art as well as a music studio.  Sara taught us how to use a spray paint can to tag, and we did our first graffiti.  We then bid adieu to Sara, and headed out of Comuna 13.

Our next stop was the Botanic Garden.  It was fairly amazing the variety of plants that were in the garden, from very tropical to temperate, because of Medellín’s unique climate.  We saw numerous palms (including Wallichia disticha, native Ceroxylons, and Verschaffeltias from Seychelles), several species of enormous flowering trees, and several species of heliconias and gingers.  We also saw a bunch of mariposas, and Crystal spotted an insect that blended in with the orchid roots, having the same shape and color.  At lunch we also realized there were quite a few zancudos (mosquitoes).  We (or at least Justin) would have liked to stay a bit longer, but we had a busy day.  Perhaps we should’ve come over yesterday afternoon for a longer visit (but then again it was raining).

After lunch we took a short walk over to one of the metro stations, Universidad, where we boarded the metro for the Acevedo station.  At Acevedo we got off the metro, and transferred to a teleférico (cable car) that took us uphill to Santo Domingo.  We chatted with Danna about her field of interest (environmental engineering) and what all that entailed.  She had been in Germany for a bit, and spoke German in addition to English (and Spanish).  At Santo Domingo, we took a handful of photos of the city, then went right back down the way we came.  On the way back down, three youths were in the teleférico with us, and we spoke with them a bit in Spanish.

There was a problem with the metro at Universidad (the doors kept reopening after closing), but John was right there anyway finishing up his lunch, so we just met him there.  He drove us into El Centro, and we got out of the car at Plaza Botero.  Danna explained how Botero and Medellín had an “interesting” relationship.  Botero was from Medellín, and he originally wanted to donate a bunch of art to the city, but the city wasn’t interested.  So Botero contacted Bogotá, who was quite interested, and Botero donated basically everything that we saw at the Botero Museum in La Candelaria.  This made Botero even more famous, at which point Medellín felt a bit embarrassed, and so the city and Botero figured out a way to get more of his work into Medellín as well.  

Danna explained to us the significance of one of the statues in the square, of a child on a horse.  It refers to his own son, Pedrito, who died in a car accident when he was only four (Botero and his wife were badly injured in the same crash).  The horse has extra wide shoulders, and are intended to refer to the great weight on Botero’s shoulders from his grief.  This statue was one of about a dozen in the square, which was very lively with music and people selling their wares to tourists and locals.

We went into one of the buildings surrounding the plaza, Palacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe.  From the outside it looked like a gothic church, but actually it was a government building designed by some guy who had gone to Europe and merely liked the Gothic architecture.  Inside Danna told us all about Uribe Uribe, and his history.  He was a lawyer and journalist in addition to being a general in a rebel army in the late 1800s.  He was a big proponent of trade unions and organization of workers, and so he wasn’t particularly popular with the government, but now is revered.  The views from the top of the building over Plaza Botero were quite nice.

On the drive back we asked about how Medellín came to be, given that it isn’t in the most obvious location for a city.  Apparently it owes its location to a couple from Medellín that were gifted a large plot of land, and on that land the largest gold reserves in all of Colombia were found.  This led to Medellín becoming a banking hub, as Medellín had more money than Bogotá and could lend money to others, and over time this led to huge growth.  Also on the drive home Danna played several songs demonstrating the progression of Colombian music from cumbia (introduced from African slaves) to present-day salsa.  Justin actually knew one of the songs, resulting in audible surprise from John.

We got back to the hotel just before 16:00.  After we got back, we exchanged some Euros for pesos.  We usually don’t exchange money, opting instead to just take money out of the ATM.  But our American ATM cards had expired and we didn’t have the new ones yet, and our Spanish ATM card has quite high fees for both taking money out and for currency conversion, so we figured there was probably less money “lost” by exchanging currency.  There was also a money exchange just down a hallway from the lobby, so that made things easy.  Afterwards Crystal did foreign language homework in the room, and Justin went out to watch the end of the Atlético Madrid vs Real Madrid match.

Around 18:00 we went to get drinks, and then food, at a Salsa bar called El Social Numero 2.  Justin had spotted it on his walk this morning, and we read reviews this afternoon that sounded promising.  It was just a few blocks from our hotel, but in the opposite direction from the most touristy area (Provenza).  The music was good, there weren’t Americans everywhere, and the food and drinks were substantially less than if we’d walked the other direction out of the hotel.  We tried a couple different rums and aguardientes, but also chugged a bunch of water to ensure we’d be hydrated for our climb up El Peñol tomorrow.  We were back at the hotel around 20:30, and we didn’t stay up much longer after we returned.