I hadn't planned to visit Medellin until a few days before I got there. I anticipated taking a bus or flying to Bogota from Santa Marta after spending most of my time in Colombia near the Caribbean coast. After almost two months in the hot lands of Central America and northern Colombia, though, I was ready to get to the mountains again and decided to forego beach time at Taganga or Tayrona National Park on the Caribbean for some urban experiences in Medellin. The city has intrigued me for a while both because of its rough past but current very good reputation among many travelers I meet.

Medellin is known as the "City of Eternal Spring" for its temperate climate, probably one of several places in Latin America at high altitudes and low latitudes that can make that claim . Situated in a valley in the central cordillera of the Andes at an altitude of about 4,500 feet Medellin is neither constantly hot like the low latitudes nor chilly like higher-altitude Bogota. I’d be inclined to call it eternal summer rather than spring, though, since most days have high temperatures close to 80*F, more summery than springlike to me. The city’s physical location in a valley in the Andes reminds me a little of Quito, Ecuador.

The city’s other nickname, or at least one it’s trying to give itself, is “Latin America’s Capital of Innovation” for its numerous universities, fledgling technology industry, and interesting mix public transportation. And locals pronounce the name of their city something like MED-e-gene, where the double L that in Spanish is usually pronounced more like the Y in English takes on a strong English J sound. Similarly in these parts, the word for chicken (pollo) sounds more like POI-jo. Nevertheless, I still the Spanish spoken by people in Medellin to be easier to understand than that spoken along the Caribbean coast.

My overnight bus ride from Santa Marta to Medellin took fifteen hours in total and was very uncomfortable. I took a few diphenhydramine pills and must have slept at some points because of my recollection of some wicked dreams. Towards morning I had the sensation the bus was going up steadily for a long time, but between fogged windows and the dark I couldn’t see much . I hope we don’t go over a cliff! At one point I woke up, noticed it was light out, and that the bus was stopped at a rest area. I got up and went out to get a coffee and found out that it was really cold!

The bus dropped a long distance into the valley where Medellin is situated, and I took the Metro from the terminal to the hostel I booked a few blocks from a station in the middle class Las Laureles neighborhood on the west side of town. At about $20/night for a private room with air con and a bathroom in the room, I can’t complain about prices of things in Colombia.



I spent the rest of my first day in Medellin in the center of city. There are quite a few interesting things like the Plaza Botero and Museum of Antioquia (the large province where Medellin is located). The city center is busy but heavy on very dated looking office towers from South America’s 1970s boom. Like elsewhere in Latin America, rich folks have moved to suburban satellites where they’ve built their new Zona Rosas leaving traditional downtowns a bit on the shabby side. Medellin is also a very modern city without a significant old town, just a church here and a monument there but little dating back to colonial times. That said, most of Medellin is unusually clean for a big city in Latin America and people take pride in transformation of city over last 15 to 20 years into one of most livable in Latin America .

One of those monuments is the Museo de a Memoria, opened in 2012 to memorialize victims of Medellin’s violent past. Medellin was synonymous with earthly hell for decades, especially through the 1990s. The museum is similar to others in Lima and Santiago and Central American nations that recount the dark events of a not too distant past in Latin America. The displays provide lots of stats in interesting interactive exhibits. One exhibit listed annual crimes of various sorts by year in the city, most notably homicides which peaked at nearly 9,000 in some years in early 1990s but are down to less than 500 in recent years. That’s probably still not a great ratio by international standards but is an almost 95% improvement in a city of around three million inhabitants.

I later came across the location where one of the most notorious events of Medellin’s era of violence took place, the Plaza de San Antonio. There a car bomb went off at a peace rally in 1995 killing dozens of people standing around Fernando Botero’s “Bird of Peace” statue on the plaza . Botero insisted the remains be left in place is a somewhat reassembled form. He then created a copy of the original which stands beside it.

One thing I did not do in Medellin was go on one of the various popular Pablo Escobar themed tours around the city which go to some of the drug lord’s hideouts and hangouts in the years before he was killed in 1993. One such tour on weekends (I was in Medellin during the week) even meets with Roberto Escobar, Pablo’s brother and the Medellin Cartel’s chief accountant, who has been released after many years in prison. Although some people make money from the tours, my impression is that most people in Medellin disapprove of the tours which confer an elevated status to Escobar of which he’s not deserving.