Medellín, Colombia

Our first taster of Medellín was driving through the lively El Poblado area on a Friday night. From that first glance we instantly liked the city. Medellín is an artsy, cultural city bursting with independent eateries, shops and bars. We stayed in El Poblado, the more affluent and touristy area of the city. The Black Sheep was an excellent home for our entire stay – clean, modern with extremely helpful staff – highly recommend if looking for a budget friendly option in Medellín.

Still tired from our previous day of travel we spent our first day in the city exploring and eating good food. We started the day with a delicious American style brunch and the most amazing coconut macchiato (so good it gets its own special mention). More on Medellín’s coffee culture below. After much meandering through the streets of Poblado we took the metro to Acevedo and the cable car up to Santo Domingo. The price of the first cable car is included in the metro ticket and connects some of the poorer barrios (neighbourhoods) to the rest of the city. The brief journey takes you high into the hills overlooking the greater Medellín area. The highest stop – Santo Domingo is the gateway to the second cable car (an additional cost) that connects to Parque Arvi which is an expansive nature preserve perched on top of the valley. To be honest we kind of stumbled into Parque Arvi. From Santo Domingo the cable car looks like it goes a short distance to the top of the mountain but in fact it goes much further. Unprepared for a hike instead we availed of the food stalls at the top and took a small stroll around before making our way back. That night we headed out to sample the night life first hand. First stop was the highly recommended Cafe Zorba for some amazing vegetarian pizza. Afterwards we tried a number of the bars in the locality!

Sundays are quiet in Medellín. Most of the tours and excursions run Monday through to Saturday. The main road in Poblado was closed allowing families, runners and cyclists to move freely. The owner of the Black Sheep recommended a small local Sunday market for food. After an early lunch of empanadas and arepas (corn cakes) topped with queso we wandered over to Medellín’s Museum of Modern Art. Definitely not the most impressive modern art collection but still a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The main exhibit featured a lifetime collection of works from local artist Débora Arango and depicted how her style and subject matter evolved during her career.

The following day we booked onto the free city walking tour. The tour guide picks you up from your hostel and you all travel together from Poblado metro station to El Centro. Unlike other walking tours I’ve done in Europe this tour focused on information about the history of the city rather than the actual attractions of the city. Along the way our tour guide, Juan, pointed out places to come back to later and revisit but his tour centred on Medellín’s re- generation from most dangerous city in the world to one of culture and innovation. Juan was an incredibly upbeat guy despite telling us that 6 of his 8 childhood friends were murdered and 2 of his uncles were kidnapped for ransom during the 90s. Like so many people we met in Medellín he refused to let the dark past of the city overshadow his present day and future. The tour concluded in Parque San Antonio beside two statues by the famous Colombian Fernando Botero. Originally the square was home to just one statue but sadly in 1995 the FARC planted a bomb under the statue killing 23 innocent people as they attended a concert. Rather than remove the sculpture Botero installed a second bird by its side. The destroyed remnants of his statue titled the “Pajaro de Paz (Bird of Peace)” sits next to an intact replacement, a literal symbol of the transformation that the city underwent in the last few decades. After the walking tour we spent our afternoon re-tracing our morning steps and taking a more in depth look at Rafael Uribe Uribe Palace of Culture, the dramatic black and white Gothic building in the centre of Plaza Botero (presumably so called for all the Botero statues that frame the square).

Medellín is located in the department of Antioquia, home to one of Colombia’s coffee regions. We tried to book a couple of the highly rated coffee farm day tours but at short notice and in low season they were quite expensive. Instead we opted for the tour offered by our hostel to San Antonio coffee farm. I won’t go into it in too much detail because Caoimh has written a comprehensive overview of the day and the coffee making process but it was one of the best tours of our trip so far despite neither of us being major coffee drinkers and it costing half the price of others online. Read more here…Measuring Stubble – San Antonio Coffee Farm

We hoped to do the Pablo Escobar tour offered by Pasia Roads earlier in our stay but when we tried to book it, it was already booked out. There’s numerous Escobar tours on offer in the city (ironic really qiven that the city is trying to move on from it’s violent past). One tour is connected to Escobar’s family and even features an appearance from his brother Roberto however, we felt that Pasia Road would offer a more real and unbiased account of Escobar’s lifetime. So as timing would have it we spent our last day touring Medellín with them and learning about its grim past. Buildings that we had innocently walked by in the days before become pivotal to the story of Escobar’s life and death. It was a sombering end to a fantastic week in Medellín listening to the the emotion in our guide Paula’s voice as she retold what it was like to grow up in a city riddled by murder and corruption.. Although unintentional I’m glad we left the Escobar tour to the last day because although we heard snippets of stories we only fully realised the true extent of Escobar’s reign as we got
ready to leave. Like the people of Medellín want our stay wasn’t tinged by the past. That night as we physically left Medellín it was hard to forget the last few days and how a city shadowed by so much grief can be filled with so much hope for the future.