Most people probably know Medellín for its violent reputation back in the 90’s. It was the world’s most dangerous city in 1991 due to the Medellín Cartel. These days, that history is still very much apparent in sites around the city, but the violence and crime is nowhere near what it used to be. It’s become a pretty popular tourist destination due to its perfect weather (low 80’s during the day, mid 60’s at night) and beautiful surroundings.

Now since we had gone so long without one of us being sick, John decided it was his turn to come down with a stomach bug. It lasted almost our entire time in the city, so unfortunately we didn’t get around nearly as much as we had planned. I went on a few day excursions while he slept back at the hostel, but we mostly hung around the El Poblado neighborhood where we were staying. It is a very upscale neighborhood surrounded by hostels, restaurants, and bars that kind of reminded us of the neighborhood we stayed in Mexico City – there are a ton of tourists around, but it also seems to be where the wealthier locals live as well.

City Tour

Since John was sick, I went on the free walking tour of Medellín by myself. We’ve been on a few free walking tours at this point, but this one was absolutely the best I’ve been on (highly recommend it for anyone visiting Medellín!). Our tour guide’s name was Pablo, but he made it very clear he didn’t like to be associated with “the man that share’s his name”. He was born right before the time of Pablo Escobar, so his earliest memories are from the very violent times of the city. Because of this, he was very clear that the shows and movies about Escobar idolize him too much and wanted to give his perspective as someone that lived through it. He said in general there are three groups of people and their feelings about Escobar – those that lived through it and hate him, those that were born after and love him because they weren’t taught about it, and those that don’t know how to feel because of a few “nice” things he also did for the city. The part that was the most interesting to me was how apparently the younger generation hasn’t been taught about it in schools, so their info comes from the Netflix shows that the rest of the world watches and therefore they have the more idolized image of him. According to him, for better or worse the city has collectively tried to forget about their past and just focus on the brighter times ahead.

After he gave us a brief history of the city, we walked through the central historical part of the city. It was incredibly busy, full of vendors, shoppers, tourists, and locals. We stopped a few times to talk about the history of the buildings or historical events that had happened (a lot of locations were sites of horrific bombings). One of my favorite spots he pointed out was a group of men all over the age of 60 that were standing around holding random objects. He said this group of men are all retired, and everyday they show up there with something from home to trade with someone else because it gives them something to do. Apparently they spend hours debating back and forth trying to get the best trade (e.g. I’ll give you this watch for two hats) and then come back again and do it again the next day. We stopped and watched them for a while and it was pretty entertaining!

Our last stop on the tour was in the Parque San Antonio. It was at the site of a bombing that killed 23 people in 1995 when someone put a bomb in one of the statues in the park. Rather than removing the explosion evidence, the artist (Fernando Botero) requested the city keep the destroyed statue and then he created a new one to place next to it. It’s supposed to symbolize where the city has been and where it is now, in hopes of reminding everyone how bad it can be so they never get that way again. It was a powerful place to end the tour, and our tour guide’s storytelling gave such an important local’s perspective on a very popularized story these days.

The Transportation

The public transportation in Medellín is super impressive – the metro system will take you all over the city for very cheap. I naively took an uber my first day and paid about 5 times the price to get to my destination twice as slow than if I had just taken the metro! It is also the cleanest public transportation I’ve ever been on. My tour guide from the day tour made a comment about how the people of Medellin are very proud and grateful for their metro system and therefore take really good care of it, and he wasn’t kidding! The system also includes a series of cable-cars that connect the large hills surrounding the city to the rest of the city. For the same price as a metro ride you can take these cable-cars. It’s a very impressive system!

Guatapé

On our last day in Medellín, John was feeling healthy again so we took a day trip to Guatapé. It used to be a large farming town, but was transformed into a large hydroelectric producer in the 1970s. The first thing we did was climb the El Penon de Guatapé, a large rock with a series of staircases that gives a great view of the area at the top. It was well worth the climb, the views are breathtaking!

We then walked to the main part of the very colorful town to grab lunch. A few people we met recommended we take jet skis out on the water, and we had just been talking about how John had never been on a jet ski so we thought it was perfect! We spent a couple hours wandering around the water before our bus ride back to Medellín.

Overall we would love to go back to Medellín and be able to do more things around the city. But we (mostly me) really enjoyed the things we were able to do!

Christine