Medellín, Colombia
South America 2010
Colombia — Medellin, Santa Marta, Taganga, Parque Tayrona
Not done yet: Cartagena, Amazon, Lima, Cusco, Salkantay/Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, La Paz.
I spent the summer of 2010 backpacking South America, starting in Medellín, Colombia on 6 June 2010. The following pages contain a few photos and notes from the trip.
Colombia from the plane into Medellín; below are fincas — small, usually non-operating farms. Many Colombians dream of retiring to a finca in the country.
The lovely Bonilla family picked me up from the airport and, for my first meal in Colombia, whisked me away to Crepes and Waffles — a restaurant employing only single mothers. The pesto veggie crepe was excellent.
Homecooked Colombian desayuno (breakfast). With more things to drink (water, hot chocolate, fresh juice, coffee) than eat, I feel like this meal was designed for me.
From the top of El Cerro Nutibara, you can see nearly all of Medellín. The city is stretched out in a north-south valley in a northern chain of the Andes.
A little stone building near the Bonillas' house. When I mentioned it would be a cool place to live (nothing to do with reading Walden, I'm sure), I was informed that it's a actually a tool shed for one of the nearby homes. I'm a little jealous of those tools.
The Bonillas' neighborhood, a mountain community 20 minutes outside the city filled with modern, minimalist houses.
The metro in Medellín runs along the bottom of the valley, with two Metrocable lines branching off into the hills.
The two Metrocable lines were built to connect the poor neighborhoods in the hills around Medellín to the center of the city. I'm told that the transformation since 2006 has been remarkable.
The Plaza Botero in front of the Museo de Antioquia. Fernando Botero Angulo, a painter and sculptor from Medellín, is famous for depicting fat people and things, in this case, a.... dog?
Instead of having to go to a cell phone store to buy more minutes (or heaved forbid having some contract with a company that makes you hate life), in Colombia, you can just buy minutes from any of the ubiquitous minuto street vendors. $200 COP = $.10 USD.
Botero's fat Pablo Escobar, the most successful narcotics trafficker in history, being gunned down on a Medellín rooftop in 1993. The movie Blow portrayed parts of Escobar's early career.
The Museo de Antioquia has a large exhibit on the music and dance of Colombia and the surrounding areas, including easy to follow footprints for many dances. These seem a far more effective method for learning different dances than the muddled instructions I'm used to.
A ride on the second Metrocable line. Camilo and I took this one all the way to Parque Arví via a recent extension.
If I was a bus driver, I would totally be a bus driver in Medellín. Some of the roads are ridiculously fun to drive.
A pretty cool and accurate sundial. The sun is reflects off a disk on the podium, casting light on the underside of the curved concrete. Colombia doesn't muck about with daylight savings time, so the sundial is accurate year round.
An incarnation of Archimedes' Screw at Parque Explora. And yes, I did stand there turning it and watching the water come out the top until the complaints from the line of 10 year old kids behind me became impossible to ignore, even in Spanish.
Camilo and I went to many clubs, bars, and discotecs with friends. This was a Pandora, with Johana and one of several Sebastians (not pictured).
There was often fog in the mountains, sometimes appearing and disappearing in the course of several minutes.
View from the top of El Peñon of part of the surrounding valley, which has been turned into a reservoir.
Living room, entryway, and dining room of the Bonillas' house. The minimalism, right angles, and sliding doors were reminiscent of Japanese houses.
