The trip from around the Salento region to Medellin should take 5 hours, with the current roadworks more likely 8 hours but many people that I have met had reported it to last longer than 11!! This cemented my decision to take a flight from Manizales to Medellin.
I had also heard that the airport is about 1 hour from the centre. I was pleasantly surprised to fly over the city centre and land in it… there is also an airport in the centre for smaller planes. This means that I had a quick taxi ride to my accommodation.
I stayed in the well- to- do part of town, filled with restaurants and cafes as well as expensive car sale garages. It was pleasant to walk around. The whole city is spread out, like many South American cities, throughout a large valley and up the mountain sides. It is a good thing then that the city is very well connected with the metro, cable cars and bus lines. The city has a park that has many Botero statues in it (called Botero Park). Botero donated these statues, each valued at 1.5 million USD. These were placed in what used to be a very dicey part of the city. This is an example of democratic transformative art that can be found around the city.
I spent the day walking around the city and visiting the museum of modern art (MAAM). The city is very busy, loads of people and construction happening. There is a much more obvious problem with homeless people in this city than others I have been to. The next day I joined a walking tour- with the lovely Mari from Realcitytours. The tour gave a good insight into how Medellin went from being the most dangerous city in the world to what it is today. It also gave us an appreciation of life during those very violent times and a little bit of an understanding of Colombians and their current happy state. The peace is still somewhat unstable and uncertain, but is a marked improvement on the past. With more stability come more tourists- about 50 000 per annum, 25 years ago to 5 million now.
There is a chilling tale of violence that took place in San Antonio Square. There was a concert that was taking place in July 1995. Families were attending and enjoying the evening when a bomb exploded. The bomb had been set in a Botero statue of a bird. Botero himself requested the major to keep the blown up bird statue as a reminder of the incident and death that had occurred. He also then made another statue. These two now stand side by side and a are a reminder of the past and hope for the future. This is only one of thousands of examples of violence though.
2 replies on “Medellin”
Wow. Thank you so much Jo. We visit the world through your eyes and love it! Take care
Very encouraging that they managed to change the place so dramatically. I also like the idea of keeping the destroyed bird and creating a new one next to it. Very symbolic