Kathleen
Columbia – Medellin
June 7, 2014
What a lovely city! This city, although it is the second largest in Columbia with 3.5 Million inhabitants if you include the surrounding municipalities, was completely unknown to us before we planned this trip. We have since learned that the city was completely under the thumb of drug lord Pablo Escobar in the 1980’s and 90’s and was known as one of the most violent cities in the world. The city has been cleaned up immensely since that time and Escobar’s death. It is in the interior of Columbia at almost 5,000 ft in altitude. The weather was almost perfect when we were there, about 75 degrees and sunny most of the time (although we did get a few bursts of rain). It is built in and among various hills and valleys and is just lovely to look at from afar (They of course have a cable car which we of course rode up to get the good views). We were staying in the hip area of town know for its bars and clubs and although we did not participate in the late-night revelry, we were able to find a couple of very nice restaurants to enjoy and certainly had a good time in the one full day and two nights we had alloted to the town. Medellin also had its own elevated transit system which we were able to take all the way across town, where we transferred to the previously mentioned cable car system – quite a nice system!
We only spent two nights in Medellin and then it was out to the blissful green of the “coffee triangle,” a 6 1/2 hour bus trip from Medellin…..
