From Murder Capital to Metro Cable

For much of the 80's and 90's, Colombia had the dubious honor of having the highest murder rate of any country in the world.  And the city of Medellin led by example.  The violence was fueled by the war between Pablo Escobar's cartel and the nearby Cali cartel.  From what I've read and heard, Colombians were afraid, or at least hesitant, to explore their own country.

But since Pablo's death, Medellin's safety record has improved by leaps and bounds.  And just like in the 80's and 90's, the rest of Colombia's cities soon followed.  These days, Colombians are getting reacquainted with their homeland, and they talk about neighboring Venezuela as a crime-ridden place where thieves, murderers, and rapists are waiting for you to let your guard down.  Indeed, Venezuela currently competes with Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Brazil for the country with the most violent crime in, at least the Western hemisphere, if not the world.

But, make no mistake, Colombia is neither Japan nor Switzerland.  There are criminals, there is crime there.  Common sense is a must : be careful at night, be careful (or avoid altogether) in some of the poorer barrios, don't flaunt your valuables.

Nowadays the city of Medellin has such an irresistable charm and livability.  In fact, of all the cities I've explored in Venezuela and Colombia, Medellin would be my first choice for a home.  The city's tucked away in an Andean valley, and thus has a perfect and constant springtime temperature.  You want the other seasons ? You don't have to wait months, like in Europe : Climb the nearby mountains for winter, descend a couple of hours toward the coast for the summer heat.



But, like in Europe, parks, plazas, and museums are in abundance.  My two favorite places include 1) a plaza and museum dedicated to Colombia most famous artist (no, not Shakira) Fernando Botero, famous for his paintings and sculptures of fat, uh, voluminous characters and 2) the Barefoot Park, where visitors are expected to take the shoes off and let their toes explore all the different sensations available.

Medellin is a thoroughly modern city.  The metro is first rate, and, even better, they have what's called a metro cable, meaning at the end of the metro, you change from a car to a telepherique and a cable pulls you up the mountain high above the barrios below.  In fact, one of the metro cables will take you for an hour until you reach the Park Arvi, an enormous and lush reserve perched high above the city and crisscrossed by hiking trails and streams and wandering fauna.  We liked it so much we visited twice, camping the second time around.

In most places around the world, the people you meet are the city's best attribute, and Medellin is no expection.  Within five minutes of arriving, we had been approached, greeted, and invited home by a complete stranger.  In the coming weeks, people seemed very at ease approaching us to ask where we were from, what we're doing in Colombia, and how we like it.

So if you ever get make the opportunity to go to Colombia, go !  And Medellin better be on your itinerary.  Just make sure you forget every newspaper clipping and Hollywood depiction you've ever seen.

A South American's Home Is His Fortress

The average South American is about as friendly and inviting as you could imagine someone being.  You need help, they'll offer it.  You need advice, they'll give it.  You're hungry, they'll feed you.  Welcome to our home, they say.  Make yourself comfortable, they say.  Make yourself at home, they say.  And they mean every word of it.  But when you're there, you get the impression that you are not in the oasis of tranquility you first thought.

You see, in the States, we say that a man's home is his castle.  And a South American's home is his castle, too.  But his castle is fortified.  To the teeth.  Latin Americans are, seemingly, paranoid about home invasions.  Whether you're in the big ciudad or the tiny pueblo, everyone's windows and door are covered in iron bars, and everyone's doors have three locks.  The nicer apartment buildings have guards.  With big guns.

Those same nice apartment buildings are usually surrounded by tall fences lined by escape-proof and entry-proof razor wire.  Poorer home owners encircle their homes with concrete walls and then glue broken glass on top.

Even the indigenous Wayuu, who live in the desert and have limited building materials, create fences of terror.  They make theirs from the local cacti.  Climb over that burglars !  And by the way, welcome to our humble home.

It's Laundry Day, Again...

It's not so easy packing for a long trip in South America.  In the North, they have dry seasons and wet seasons;  In the South, the standard four-pack, only inverted.  And the climatic conditions within the countries vary so much : there are scorching coastal beaches, blistering deserts, and dripping wetlands on the one hand and oxygen-deficient and freezing five- and six-thousand-meter peaks on the other.  In between, rainforests are crisscrossed by rivers and creeks with biting insects and caiman.  You have to be prepared for everything for all conditions.  It's no Estonia after all.


During the last four months, we've been mostly around the Caribbean coast, from the Orinoco delta in Venezuela to Cartagena in Colombia (Remember Romancing the Stone ?) and the only times we've felt cold were inside the night buses, which are kept at meat-locker temperatures.  The rest of the time, we were dripping, nay, bathing in our own perspiration day and night.  ...Like Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone.

One hundred percent of deodorants in Colezuela are antiperspirant, but I thought it'd be unwise to rub it all over my body.  Anyways, it was hell.  Like Florida's summer if you don't have A/C.  All the time.  And when your t-shirts gets soggy and disgusting after roughly three minutes of wearing, it means you have to do the laundry quite often.   And I can tell you, our backpacks were big and heavy and full of everything, everything except the washing machine.  So we bought a bar of laundry soap and rubbed and rubbed and rinsed and rinsed and wrung and wrung.  Every two or three days.

So it was with a cool sigh of relief, that we reached the mountains again, in Medellin, where the air is always cool.  The thermometer hardly ever moves; of course it never breaks a sweat.  And we walked around for hours and days.  And we didn't sweat either.  The mountains were our antiperspirant.   Imagine, you take off your shirt at the end of the day and you sniff the pits...and they smell of untainted flowers.  And days and days go by without the laundry bag getting filled up.  Well that was about heaven for me.

What Mr. Moustache didn't know...

As I wrote in my latest article, South Americans are always willing to help, whether you ask or not, and I sincerely love them for that.  But sometimes it seems that their willingness to be helpful far exceeds there ability to be helpful.

Many a times, we've asked for direction to the bank, to a supermarket, to the post office, etc.  Only about one person in 20 says, "sorry, I don't know."  Unfortunately, that guy is one of the few who actually knows what he knows, if you get my meaning.  Rarely do we ever arrive at our destination.

The ritual, which is funny the next day but never at the moment, goes something like this :

- "Excuse me sir," we ask the tall moustachioed man, "we're looking for the nearest post office.  Do you know where it is ?"

- "Oh yes !," he answers excitedly.  "You need to walk two blocks up this road, and he points, then turn left at the red light.  Then walk one more block and you'll see it."

We thank him and follow his directions and find three pollo restaurants and four stores selling shoes.  We then ask a kindly-looking woman who's waiting for a bus.

- "Walk up this way one block, then turn right and walk two blocks."

- "Are you sure ?  We just came from that direction.  And we didn't see it."

- "Oh, it's there, I'm sure of it."  So we follow her directions, and we discreetly walk past the man with the moustache.  And we ask a student standing on the corner.

- "Oooh, it's far away."  And she points in the opposite direction of Mr. Moustache and Mrs. Kindly."  Just walk straight for about 10 or 15 minutes on this road."

Guess what ?  Was the post office there ?  If you could see our shaking heads and slumped shoulders, you'd know the answer.

So we give up and walk in a different direction, perpendicularly away from Miss Student, Mr. Moustache, and Mrs. Kindly, searching instead for something to eat.  And five minutes later, we find the post office.

And of course that post office couldn't send our letters...but that's another story.

The next day, we ask an elderly man for directions to a bus stop.

- "Well, I'm not sure.  Let's go ask someone else."  I could have kissed him.