Medellin Bus Terminal - Saturday, January 18th

Medellin was turning out to be a lot more civilised than previous reports had suggested. While there were plenty of boozing options available, the place wasn’t a den of pure hedonism. Although I imagine those looking for it can find it. I certainly hadn’t expected to eat the best Indian food I’ve ever had there, especially with a gay couple from Amsterdam.

I’d met Harry and Heele at the hostel bar and we quickly hit it off. Harry was an air steward for KLM and Heele managed an upmarket apartment rental for tourists. It turns out that Britian has been quietly maintaining its grip on cultural imperialism, unbeknownst to the vast majority of the British population. Both were able to recite, almost ad verbatim, every Little Britain sketch ever screened. It didn’t end there. Fawlty Towers, Keeping up Appearances, Mr Bean, Torchwood and Downtown Abbey were staples in many Dutch households. This proved easy fodder for what turned out to be a very jovial evening.

They had been together for 17 years and had seen the vast majority of the world thanks to cheap seats on KLM flights. As I had suspected, the biggest nuisance for Harry on long haul flights was excited couples. The second biggest was babies. A hot headed Dane on one flight wrote a letter of complaint to the CEO of KLM about a crying baby in economy. Unfortunately he didn’t understand a word as it had been written in Danish.

On Thursday night I wanted to meet someone from Medellin proper. I had been given the contact details of a friend of Francine’s (Marianne’s stepdaughter). She was called Alejandra and had had worked with Francene at a mobile phone operator. She very kindly offered to come to my hostel for drinks as my sim wasn’t 100% reliable and no taxi driver in the city seems to know where anything is. Especially when a gringo steps in.

Initially the plan was to go to a salsateca with her friends but they were closed on Thursday. It was great to have the chance to speak with someone who lived in the city. She was very bookish and certainly not the stereotypical Medellin party animal. We shared ideas and stories and had very enjoyable evening. It certainly made a change from endlessly having to tell people the details of your journey. In general there seems to be a great deal of apathy on the part of most hostel goers when it comes to speaking to locals. The exception to this being many of the female locals who came to the area to party. They were certainly not wanting for company.

After the excitements of the jungle on Thursday I decided that the walking tour of the city seemed to be a less fraught option.

I took the beloved Metro downtown and was greeted by Pablo, a man of around my age, short thin with a resting expression that conveyed a strong underlying streak of consideration and intelligence. He had studied electrical engineering and worked for several years in Budapest. Afterwards he had travelled all over the world and seemed to have taken in a great deal from his journeys.

Once the whole group had gathered we slinked off to a quiet spot near a restored steam engine. He explained the history of Medellin and the Paesa people who settled in this area in the 16th century. The reason for Medellin’s feeling of superiority over the rest of Spain became clear. The Paesa people were direct descendants of Basques and Jews. Both had escaped persecution and ended up finding solace in the heartland of Colombia. Pablo said that all Paesa cannot help these feelings of superiority. Despite claiming to dislike them, they were in his blood and it couldn’t be helped.

Pablo spoke with a heartfelt eloquence and impassioned theatricality that was as touching as it was engaging. With the aid of a small speaker hanging around his groin he began the tour. The safety briefing had been about ‘papaya’, the Colombian word for opportunity. The Colombians are people who like to take papaya. Therefore we should give them no papaya.

Like Bogota, Medellin was also a city of contrasts. None of the contradictions were more apparent than the way Colombians used the spaces outside their churches. The first church we looked at was the church of San Sebastian. In my opinion South American churches are no scratch on their European counterparts. However, the outside of this church was more decorative than any European equivalent. I hadn’t noticed anything until Pablo mentioned it. Then it struck me. There were prostitutes. Everywhere.

Suddenly the dull niggling of my subconscious experienced catharsis. The steps of the church, walls, phone boxes, trees, benches - every available space that offered resting space was taken up by heavily painted women of All proportions. The predominant shape was rotund in extremis. I hope they don’t pay by the pound here. The old adage of 'she could eat you for breakfast’ seemed quite plausible.

Three other churches all had similarly amusing external features. The Belgian architect of one had fled the country half way through construction. The Colombians decided they could finish it without him. To say the final result was piss poor would be an understatement. They look like two completely different buildings.

The next church’s exterior had become the premier destination in town for selling hardcore porn. I’ve never seen so much porn in one place. The exterior wall must gave been 30 metres in length. Both walls were jammed end to end with stacks of porn catering to every taste known to mankind. Amongst them was a lone, and rather dejected looking man selling rosary beads.

The final church was branded by the people of Medellin as the largest on earth. It turns out that it was actually just the largest red brick church in the world. Furthermore, it referred to a specific type of red brick had never really been used for church building. While we couldn’t see it, we were told that the back door plays host to the ladyboy prostitutes of Medellin. I was impressed at how effectively the locals were able to get the most from their public spaces.

Outside was a square laced with patches of beautiful greenery. Another form of greenery was being smoked by many of the hundreds of people taking up all of the sitting space available in the square. A cheap form of crack (yes Colombians have made crack from crack) was also being smoked by quite a few and some were inhaling an industrial solvent from plastic bags. Many of them were drinking heartily from old soda bottles. It turned out they were filled with 70 per cent rubbing alcohol from the pharmacy and fruit juice (sometimes). Pablo then pointed across the square to another enormous building. “That’s the city’s police headquarters.”

We discussed the murder of a journalist who had published negative stories about Pablo Escobar when he was a congressman. The journalist was swiftly seen to. A memorial was set up but this was destroyed by a bomb. It was then rebuilt and that too was destroyed by Pablo. Violence had reached such epidemic proportions that a site where a grenade killed several civilians outside of the metro doesn’t even have a plaque.

We reached another square. There we saw a circle made from plastic bowls. In the middle stood a Guinea pig and everyone around it seemed very excited. It turns out that bets are placed on which bowl he runs into. We all placed bets and watched as a bowl was moved around violently on top of the Guinea pig. The stunned animal took nearly 30 seconds to decide. Sadly my goading didn’t have the desired effect and I was made 30p out of pocket. The winner, incidentally, gets five times the bet they placed. Was glad I didn’t have any change left. It was dangerously good fun.

We finished the tour in a square that contained two of Botero’s sculptures. There used to only be one. In 1992 someone put an enormous rucksack of explosives underneath it and detonated it during the peak market time. 20 people died, including a 7 year old girl. I could see Pablo was fighting tears as he told the story. The mayor wanted the mangled remains of the statue removed. Botero refused to let this happen and made an identical sculpture to put them side by side. One, a reminder to never forget the horrors that humanity can inflict on one another. The other was a symbol of the new Colombia. A place full of hopefor a peaceful future.

It was undoubtedly the best walking tour, or indeed tour that I’d had the pleasure of experiencing. It had been long at almost 5 hours but an incredibly worthwhile endeavour. I went back to the hostel with a head bursting under the pressure of new knowledge.

Back in backpackerville I went to visit some fairweather friends at another hostel. I was jealous of their pool and volleyball net but not of the rest of the place which looked pretty threadbare. At bang on midnight the lights turned off and the music disappeared. Off for another round of bar crawls.

In the morning I decided against the Pablo Escobar tour for moral and financial reasons. The only part that I’ve heard is particularly interesting is meeting Pablo’s brother. Apparently he will talk at length about his discovery of cures for both cancer and HIV. Both of which are due to hit the shelves shortly. Having spoken to many Colombians it is clear that he was not a loved figure, even in Medellin. While he did give lots of money to the regions poor it was a nakedly self-serving act.

Everyone I have spoken to felt the same about him. They saw him as a domestic terrorist who killed hundreds of thousands of people to protect his own interests. To this day the people of Colombia are still paying for his sins.

I decided to cut my stay in Medellin short. While the nightlife, food and fellow transients had been a delight, I was ready for a chance of scenery. I found a woman called Isobella with a guest room in the colonial gem of Cartagena, around 13 hours away by bus. The city sits on the Caribbean coast, surrounded by enormous white walls that protected it from pirates, notably one Sir Francis Drake.

I had grown weary of the hollowness of hostel life and the endless churn of people. Staying with a local would bring more balance to the overall experience. Reviews from her guests made her out to be some kind of saint. I was intrigued.

As my bus leaves the city I’m overwhelmed by the endless sheer walls of flickering amber light that flanks the city on all sides. The sight made my heart sing. A big part of me hoped that I would return one day.