Walking tour

Of course this morning I woke up very late with a hangover...getting older blows, I only had 5 drinks! Ok fine and two shots but still! We walked to the Exito! which is sort of like a Walmart and is right in our neighborhood (we go there several times a day to buy water or fruit) to get our breakfast essentials of yogurt and fruit. After breakfast we hung around the hostel for a few hours chatting with the other people before venturing out to find lunch. We were lucky enough to stumble upon a little cafe that had wraps right near our hostel, just in a different direction than we had walked before. I ordered a turkey wrap and a lemonade. Unfortunately they do not have lemons in Colombia so I got limeade which was sad because I hate lime.

After lunch we headed straight to our walking tour of the city. We were supposed to meet at one of the metro stations at 3:00 for the tour and we thought we had given ourselves enough time but it was a farther walk to the metro than we had anticipated and there was a very long line to buy metro passes. On top of that, we couldn't quite remember which metro stop we needed to get off at. Alyssa made an educated guess abut the stop (we knew it started with the letter "A") and luckily we chose the right one and they had waited for us even though we were 15 minutes late.

This was a free city tour so we weren't really sure what to expect but right away I liked our guide. He was 25 and was born in Medellin but had his masters degree in engineering and was very well travelled. I think seeing so many other places in the world had really helped him to get a greater understanding and appreciation for where he was from. He gave us a lot of history about the city, where the people had originally come from and how the city developed into what it is today. We did spend a fair amount of time talking about Pablo Escobar since Medellin is the city he ran his cartel out of but it was very clear that the Colombians hate Pablo Escobar. There seems to be some misinformation that he was a Robin Hood to the people, building roads and houses etc, but our guide (also named Pablo) explained to us that the things he did were actually to further and expedite his drug transport and were not for the people. He also went into great detail on the Colombian conflict within the government and how the drugs have played a part in the political issues over the past 30 years. He was extremely well informed and passionate and really encouraged the tough questions about his people and why things had gotten so bad; it was a great overview since I previously knew very little about it.

After this introduction, we walked through the town checking out points of interest that you would not normally see. He said it was important for us to see the real Medellin, not the tourist areas. I couldn't capture the sculpture below very well in a photo but I thought it was amazing. It is a piece depicting how the people of Medellin have grown and changed throughout time which was beautifully done. The artist's ashes are actually in a plaque at the bottom of the piece in remembrance of him.

We continued walking through what used to be the most dangerous area of town. Pablo told us that the new regime of government, called the iron fist, came in and implemented a large police and military presence to help protect the people. They took all of the rundown, drug ridden parts of town and turned them into libraries and cultural centers. The center shown in the plaza below used to be the most unsafe place in the city but is now full of light installations which and art which helped to transform the area into a cultural Mecca. He also explained that the metro system which was built in the late 80's proved to be a beacon of light for the people, allowing them to get jobs in any part of the city. The metro and cable cars extend into the slums in the northern hills and the metro charges one low, flat right now matter where you go making the entire city rapidly accessible. He said the people love and respect the metro which is why there isn't a scratch on the windows, graffiti on the walls or a piece of trash anywhere. This explains why we found the metro to be so impeccably clean.

The pretty little church shown below seems to be just a place of worship to the untrained eye, but we learned that the prostitutes of Bogota all congregate around the church waiting to be picked up- and we saw tons of them and they were all so unattractive. Apparently, many Latin Americans use religion as more of a soap to wash away their sins than as a guideline for how you should live. The men would come to the church to pick up a woman, then take her to one of the countless hotels surrounding the church for a few hours and then bring her back to the church to confess and be absolved of his sins. Apparently this is a theme that has led many people in Colombia to a life of crime. People involved with drug trafficking who needed to kill a police officer or enemy would pray to Mother Mary and say that if she believed that person should live, she should make the bullet miss the person and if they were evil and should die, then the bullet should hit them. They often carved crosses onto the bullets symbolizing this prayer which was actually more harmful to the person that they shot because it would cause the bullet to splinter open when it hit them inflicting more damage. It was an interesting look at how a culture that seems so rapped up in religion can manipulate things in ways that allow them to live any kind of lifestyle.

We took a break from the walk to sample the local treats. Alyssa and I split little coconut cake ball that had carmel in the middle; we both thought it was ok, not great.

Medellin's most famous artist, Fernando Botero, has donated many of his sculptures to the city which can be found in the squares all around town. His work is known for its exaggerated a disproportionate sizing (aka everyone looks fat, lol).

This church in the picture below was commissioned to look like a Spanish cathedral, done exclusively in black and white. The architect abandoned the project halfway through and the Colombians said, no problem, we'll finish it ourselves. The entire back of the cathedral is just a white square building, with nothing correlating to the original plans. Pablo said that is pretty much how the Colombians do everything- grand plans but no follow through.

Pablo had given us instruction on the safety of the city. The Colombians have something called "papaga" which means, if you give an opportunity someone will take it. For example, if you leave your camera on a window sill and someone takes it you can't be upset because its your fault; it was papaga. He would give us papaga levels as we walked around the town that indicated the level of attentiveness we needed to give to our belongings. The square in the picture below was a papaga level 4 because it was an exclusively local area with a small party happening in the street. That is a perfect place for someone to steel something out of your purse or pocket, but it was fun to watch the locals in action.

The picture below is taken in front of another beautiful church. What caught our eye though was the street vendors selling hardcore porn...in front of the church. Just goes to show the dichotomies of the Colombian society.

The Botero piece below was originally just the bird in the foreground. There is a large square in front of this piece where the locals have markets and concerts. In the 90's someone decided to make a statement and placed a bomb in a backpack on the sculpture killing 25 people including many children. Botero demanded that they leave the blown up sculpture in the square to remind people of what had happened (there is a plaque below with the names of the people who were killed) but they also built a new sculpture to help remind people that they also needed to move forward. Pablo explained that he was often surprised by the questions tourists would ask about the Medellin but he then realized that none of us knew what it was like to grow up in a war. The people in Colombia forget about the grenades in the subway or the shootings in a grocery store because those things happen everyday. They cling to the happy things in their lives like a soccer match that was won 5 years so because they have to in order to keep going. He described it as though your feet are stuck in a river and the water keeps rising higher and higher until you can't breathe. At the last minute, you see a tree branch and grab ahold of it and pull yourself high enough that you can gasp for breath. At that moment, you are not thinking about the water around your neck, you are thinking about the oxygen in your lungs. That is how the Colombians live their lives, focused on the air in their lungs.

After the tour, we stopped at Exito! to get some things for dinner. One of the guys who was staying in our hostel was also on the walking tour and he offered to make us dinner. He made an amazing pumpkin risotto with chicken and broccoli- who knew you could cook like that in a hostel?!? We spent the evening drinking and talking with the other people at the hostel before calling it an early night.

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