Medellín

From Cartagena, Australian Matt and I headed south to Medellín, a bus trip of some 600km. Medellín is the capital of the department of Antioquia, whose natives are known as 'Paisas'. We had high hopes of the city. Every conversation we had had with Colombian taxi drivers ran like this:

"How are you today señores?"
"Good thanks."
"What do you think of the women in Colombia? Beautiful no?"
"Yes very beautiful."
"You are right. But the paisa women are the most beautiful of all. Are you going to Medellín?"
"Yes."
"You are lucky men! ¡Que mujeres divinas!"

Usually followed by an ad-lib paean to the women of that region, and their unequalled friendliness and curvaceousness.

With its endless heat, insects, smell and (areas of) poverty, Cartagena had been quite taxing. I had reassured Matt, based on nothing but instinct and faith in the judgment of taxi drivers, that Medellín would be the promised land. It is known as 'the city of eternal spring' due to its year-round pleasant climate. I promised beautiful women would bathe our feet, bring us milk and honey, and take pity on our inability to dance salsa or speak Spanish.

However, we read that Medellín has a dark side: until his death in 1993, Pablo Escobar ran his organised crime empire from the city, funded by exporting cocaine to most of the rest of the world. In addition to numerous assassinations of political figures, hundreds of regular inhabitants were killed by indiscriminate terrorist bombings in the city after the Medellín Cartel declared "war" on the government. It's estimated the drug trade brought the cartel tens of millions of dollars per day. It's no wonder they were so well armed and organised. Escobar offered a bounty for each policeman killed. After perhaps 20 years of reign, Escobar was killed, and the Medellín Cartel fragmented and collapsed (with help of the rival Cali Cartel).

On the bus journey itself we had our first encounter with a paisa, who seemed to sum up everything we were expecting. Not long into the trip, the girl sitting across the aisle basically ordered me to come and sit next to her. We talked about Medellín. Yes, she confirmed, the paisa women are the most beautiful and friendly in Colombia (and therefore the world). She was very pretty. She showed me pictures of home life: a large internal courtyard with private swimming pool, a huge family 4x4, her young cousin, her brother's handgun. Long ago her parents had been killed. Maybe in drug-related violence, perhaps they had police or army or political connections. I didn't want to ask. But then she spoke of how she was single, and did I have a girlfriend, and did I prefer white skin or Colombian-brown?

So with some excitement we arrived in Medellín, and to me it felt, well, European. The paisas have a reputation for enterprise and hard work, and Medellín was the first Colombian city to embrace the industrial revolution, leading to a vast expansion in wealth and size (from 50,000 to 3 million inhabitants in the past hundred years). It's the only Colombian city with a metro system. It's a huge centre for the production of textiles, coffee, food and domestic appliances. Due to a public ordinance mandating that a proportion of the funds for all new large buildings must go towards public art, the city is full of open spaces with giant sculptures.

We even found a McDonald's:

Fernando Botero, an artist born in Medellín, is one of the city's enduring heroes. His works, whose subjects are always rather chubby (though he insists they are not fat, but voluptuous with feeling), adorn the city:

After being in the city for only a day, I was contacted via a social networking/travel website by a native of Medellín, the redoubtable Henry Gomez. He and his friends are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They contacted us every day of our stay, and invited us to whatever they were doing after work that day -- going for a drink, dancing, playing billiards.

They took us to 'El puebltio paisa', a mock paisa village constructed on a small hill in the middle of Medellín:

It turns out Elena was a phenomenal dancer, even by Colombian standards, as poorly illustrated by this picture of her drinking a strawberry juice:

On a day off, Henry and Elena took Matt and I on a day trip to nearby Guatapé, where a man-made dam gives rise to the strange phenomenon of a mountain village at the side of a huge lake.

In the middle of the lakes sticking up out of the landscape is a (naturally-occurring) 220m high rock, known as La Piedra del Peñol. Bizarrely, the rock has steps up the side, and you can climb to the top.

In Guatapé we had a delicious lunch of trout (caught in the lake), and spent the afternoon arseing around.

Elena even invited us to her birthday party the day before we left:

Sadly I didn't take my camera to the club with us. The last known picture of the night is as follows:

Medellín was full of good things. Worthy of mention (as ever, click picture for an explanation):

Everything the taxistas had said about paisas was true.

Matt and I set off on the breakneck 'express' service south to Manizales and Colombia's coffee-growing region: