Medellin, Colombia

After Patagonia we headed much further north to Medellin, the first stop on our 2.5 month tour of Colombia. We opted for the cheapest (read: longest) flights from Patagonia to Medellin, so we ended up taking three flights and spending nearly 24 hours traveling. Luckily we finally discovered the glory of airport lounges and made use of this perk from Davy’s credit card. Unfortunately we couldn’t go to the lounge for the first few hours of our six hour layover in Lima, so we also discovered the glory of the floor in the hallway of the Lima airport.

Lounge/airport #1 in Punta Arenas airport: lights flashing, loud buzzing, not the height of luxury
Lounge/airport #2 in Santiago: sandwich glory
Lounge/airport #3 in Lima: sanity quickly fading. Can’t stop, won’t stop eating free lounge food
Update: unsurprising stomachache from eating all the free and mediocre lounge food.

After all this travel we were very excited to finally make it to Medellin! We ended up spending five weeks in Medellin but could have spent much longer there. Medellin is the second largest city in Colombia and is located in a valley surrounded by mountains. While it used to be known as one of the most dangerous cities in the world due to the drug trade and related violence, it’s now a largely safe city that’s a huge tourist destination. It’s seen a lot of recent developments and innovations, including a metro system and cable cars. It’s actually the only city in Colombia that has a metro system, and the metro system was quite efficient and clean (take note NYC). This is of course not to say that Medellin is a utopia without problems or areas of significant poverty, but it has certainly made many incredible changes in recent years. Additionally, we found the people to be lively, warm, and welcoming, and we really loved the city.

Beautiful views from the cable cars

Most tourists who come to Medellin stay in an area called El Poblado, but we opted to stay in another neighborhood called Laureles. Laureles is a little quieter than El Poblado and has a really nice neighborhood feel while still having tons of great restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops. We loved Laureles and were really happy to have stayed in a slightly less touristy area. Like most of Medellin, it has amazing trees, flowers, and giant cacti everywhere. Although walking between neighborhoods in Medellin was not super pleasant, walking within neighborhoods was great, and we loved walking around Laureles.

Crazy plant life in Medellin
Cafe in El Poblado
View from our Airbnb

We both felt really comfortable in Medellin and found that we quickly fell into a routine and felt right at home. Davy joined a running club and went running with them on Sunday mornings during “Ciclovia,” a weekly event in which miles of major roads are shut down for cyclists, runners, and pedestrians. We hung out with a few people from the running club, and it was really nice to actually have a social life again (it can be hard to meet people when you’re constantly moving around, have to work during the week, and aren’t staying with other travelers in hostels). Shari’s parents also visited for almost a week in the beginning of our stay, so it was really fun to see them and explore the city together.

Muchos amigos!!

Here are some highlights of our stay in Medellin:

Comuna 13 – Comuna 13 was previously one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Medellin but has become a major tourist attraction in recent years, in large part due to the street art and murals. We did a graffiti tour with Shari’s parents on one of our first days in Medellin, and it was really interesting to get more of a history of the city near the beginning of the trip. In addition to touring the neighborhood, we also rode the cable cars for the first time and learned about how the addition of the cable cars greatly reduced crime, as it opened up more economic opportunities for people living in poorer communities in the hills. We then headed to Comuna 13 and learned more about the neighborhood. The addition of street art and murals was actually a strategic idea to increase tourism and reduce crime. The city also added elevators to make the hilly neighborhood more accessible. The neighborhood itself was really beautiful, and the tour was extremely interesting.

Riding the cable cards
Graffiti in Comuna 13
Shari’s favorite graffiti
Views of Comuna 13 and Medellin

Museo de Antioquia/Plaza Botero – The art of Fernando Botero is so popular in Medellin that there’s an entire plaza named after him. Plaza Botero is filled with his statues, and it’s also home to one of our favorite museums in Medellin, Museo de Antioquia (Antioquia is the name of the state that Medellin is in). The museum has a lot of Botero paintings and sculptures as well as many other interesting pieces.

One of many Botero statues in the plaza
Beautiful cultural center next to Plaza Botero
Padres at the Museo de Antioquia
Giddy up!!
Hard core blog fans will recognize this stunning recreation of a similar photo we posted in our Buenos Aires post

Museum of Modern Art – This was another nice museum with some interesting modern art as well as nice patios with views of the city.

V cultured
Art is fun!!!!!

Botanical Garden – As we mentioned, one of the things we loved about Medellin was how green and lush it was. The city has a free botanical garden that was filled with lots of beautiful plants as well as some animals (mostly birds and iguanas). We also had a nice lunch with Shari’s parents in a restaurant in the garden.

Lunch in the garden

Parque Arvi – Once again, Medellin delivers with its parks/greenery (after living in New York City, trees/plants/flowers are very exciting). Parque Arvi is accessible by metro and a few scenic cable car rides, but it feels like it’s much further from downtown Medellin than it really is. The park is enormous, and we really only scratched the surface of it,. The park was not well marked and the park staff tried to force us to go on a guided tour, but we were able to go on some short hikes on our own using a handy navigation app. It was pretty cool to be able to go hiking and then return to a very urban city at the end of the day.

View from the cable car ride to Arvi
“Hiking” (walking) through the forest in the park

Museo de Castillo (Castle Museum) – We ended up coming here with Shari’s parents somewhat as a back-up when we realized the park we were initially going to go to was closed, but we were glad we ended up here. After walking up some big hills, we were pleased to find a giant castle with beautiful gardens overlooking the city. The castle was built in 1930 and became a museum in 1971, and it was quite ornate and beautiful.

Salsa lessons – We first decided to take a lesson with Shari’s parents since salsa is very big in Colombia. It was quite challenging but fun, and we ended up taking some more lessons on our own. We won’t embarrass ourselves with any pictures, so you’ll just have to use your imaginations on this one (hopefully in your imaginations we are better salsa dancers than we were in real life).

Guatape day trip – On one of our last weekends in Medellin we went with a group on a day trip to the nearby town of Guatape and a site called Piedra del Penol (approximately two hours from Medellin). Piedra del Penol is a essentially a large rock that offers beautiful views of the surrounding lake from the top. You have to climb 740 steps to get to the top, but it actually does not take as long as you would think. The most challenging part was going around people, as this is a really popular site that was packed with people. Although it was really beautiful, it was hard to get good views given how many people were there. After lunch, we headed to the nearby town of Guatape. The town is quite small but is beautiful and filled with colorful homes and cobblestone streets.

The stairs to the top of Piedra del Penol (it looks more intense than it is)
View from the top of Piedra del Penol
Down we go!
The church on the main plaza in Guatape
Beautiful streets of Guatape
Never a bad time to read about yoga!

Soccer game – Towards the end of our stay in Medellin we went to a soccer game with some friends from Davy’s running group. There are two soccer teams in Medellin, but it seems like everyone we met rooted for “Nacional.” Conveniently enough, the Nacional stadium was about a twenty minute walk from our apartment, and the main street in the neighborhood became flooded with fans in green and white jerseys on game days. We ended up going to a “Copa Libertadores” with Nacional playing against a Venezuelan team. Although no one scored, it was still a very fun game and an overall great experience. We were somewhat surprised by how tame it felt given what we had heard about how rowdy soccer games can get in many parts of South America, but this also could be because we were not sitting in the rowdiest/liveliest section.

Official sporting preparations
SPORTS!

All in all, Medellin was one of our favorite cities. We had heard great things about it and now fully understand why. We would definitely love to come back one day!