We really love to travel to see new things, meet new people, and eat new food. After we sort of settled down in Costa Rica we were ready to explore.
Before moving here we'd never been to Central or South America so the entire region is ripe for adventure. On the advice of just about all the random people we only sort of know we decided on Medellin, Columbia.
Random people: The weather is amazing, the food is fantastic and it's really undergone a true renaissance in the past twenty years. Oh, and it's super affordable. Like way cheaper than here.
Us: Perfect!
After we did a little research, booked our tickets and our hotel, I started telling family and friends back in the States where we were headed, without fail each one paused and said, "Where?". In that pause was a slight holding of breath, a catch of air held tight as if to say, "Are you nuts?".
My husband and I are big-time products of the '80s. We both feel extremely lucky to have spent our teen years in southern California beachin' it, sayin' dude, and listening to New Wave music.
Don and I met in the summer of 1987 at Sea World in San Diego. We were both in a show called Muscle Beach, I was a "Bathing Beaty", and Don was an announcer. Bad by Michael Jackson and the Macarena were on the radio, Three Men and a Baby was in theaters, and Cocaine was the drug of choice at parties from LA to New York.
To be clear, not my drug of choice, I'm making a social reference here in an attempt to link showing an old picture of myself in a bikini to our recent trip to Medellin and to explain why my family and friends seemed horrified when I mentioned Colombia.
Growing up in the US at that time Medellin was known for one thing and one thing only, the most powerful drug cartel in the world run by one of the most dangerous men on the planet. People referred to the city in hushed tones as the murder capital of the world. Armed drug gangs patrolled neighborhoods where police feared to tread and Pablo Escobar reined over them, a cruel villain to some and a Robinhood hero to others.
This sounds kinda scary so I'm going to throw in a picture of Don and me on one of our first dates at a beach party to lighten the tone and then fast forward to modern-day Medellin.
At the beginning of the 2000s the city redoubled its effort to eliminate the impact of the cartels jostling for power in the wake of Escobar's death. By 2007 murders were down from a height of 6,349 in 1991 to 653. In 2018 The UK Telegraph declared Medellin a cool "Hipster Destination" and in 2022 it's one of the fastest-growing locations for ex-pats to invest in a second home or to even move to full-time.
Now known most commonly as the City of Eternal Spring, for its mild temperatures nearly all of the time, Medellin is reintroducing itself to the world as a vibrant exciting city with a rich culture, dynamic past, and very exciting future.
As I'm writing this I'm sitting on a patio cafe at the hotel we are staying in. I hear the city bustling around the lush tropical garden buffering me from the businesses. The sun is warm but not hot. I have a free cup of amazing Columbian coffee and I'm researching what to do next. We're here for a week, we have a tour of Comuna 13, a former war zone from the cartel era that has transformed into an artist community and I found a saddle shop a couple of blocks away that I'm totally going to walk to so I can smell the leather (If you know me you get it, if you don't know me yet we'll let that be a mystery for now).
Getting here from Costa Rica was interesting so I'll have a post coming up about the various mistakes we made and things we learned on our journey.
For now here are a few pics of our hotel. We got in kinda late last night so this is all I've seen so far.
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