I am at this rock and roll bar called Blue in Lleras Park when these two cuties ask me if I want to go to a strip club. So off we go into the Medellin night. The cab lets us out in an industrial section of the city and we walk to the club entrance nearby.
Colombia has a lot of pretty girls. The two I am with meet the bill and the ones making a living on stage clearly could have alternate careers as runway models. So a few more rounds of drinks and we are chatting and rating the dancers. I head to the bathroom. The bar has these urinals in a same room as the crowd. There is a wall that comes up to your chest separating you from the people. So while I am pissing in the middle of the bar trying to avoid eye contact my companions are conspiring.
I return to the table and one of the girls says they have a problem. She says her friend wants to get laid. I ponder the high school motivational speakers of my youths advice that “every problem is an opportunity”. I express as much and then the girl says great but we have one more problem; I like to watch……
Colombia is a little complicated.
Some background is in order. Colombia has been in a bitter civil war for decades. It continues to be the top producer of narcotics in the world and this divides the power into the drug cartels, the government, a leftist rebel movement and a collection of morons from the US that think the way to keep their spoiled children off cocaine is to starve the farmers. It has reached an impasse. Half the country is controlled by the rebels and the other half by the elected government. They have more or less agreed to stay in their respective sand boxes, so in the Northern area Colombia has reached the most stable point in modern history.
Northern Colombia is safe and very modern but its a little odd. You can have world class cuisine and buy anything at the mall that is sold in London or New York but you can also find very poor areas and neighborhoods you have no business being in.
Like many South American countries it has a wide gap between the haves and the have nots. In Colombia by law every neighborhood is rated from 1 to 6. If you live in a 1 (poorest) you pay 5 pesos for a bottle of water. If you live in a 6 (wealthiest) you pay 30 Pesos. This is the same for all goods, services, rents etc..
They have codified social striation. You know where you sit in the social hierarchy, if you forget just check the government rating on your neighborhood. This effects every aspect of Colombia life from pig humiliation (a christmas tradition) to upward mobility. Colombians being proud will do their darnedest to keep you in zone 6. If you want to learn more you have to do a little solo exploration. It is time well spent.
Office Building of Pablo Escobar (deceased)
Medellin is an incredible city. The people, called paises, are part of a larger state known as Antiochia. They are smart, friendly, beautiful and unbelievably welcoming. They are regarded inside and outside of Colombia as the friendliest people in South America.
Whatever you think Colombia is before you arrive is probably wrong. Its a fantastic combination of sophistication and innocence and its full of surprises and complex dichotomies. It is one of my favorite countries in the world.
So….
I went to Colombia to learn Spanish. I did an impromptu query of my Spanish speaking friends and they all agreed that Colombian Spanish is one of the purest (most universally understood). I felt that if I learned my basics there I would be understood in most of the Spanish speaking world. As I write this in Buenos Aries I clearly made the right decisions because no one can understand these Argentinians. I digress.
I signed up for classes two hours a day at a university called Aefit. They have a language school that has courses in seven languages. The university itself is quite famous within Colombia for its engineering and economics programs. My tuition bought me access to all the facilities and social programs as well as my classes.
I fell in love with Colombian coffee. Colombia grows the worlds best coffee. There are little stands all over that sell “tintos” small black coffees for a few pesos (basically pennies). The Colombian peso is 2000 to the dollar. Viewing your bank account in pesos. I am a millionaire!!!
I had the university make my living arrangements prior to my arrival. As high speed internet is my life’s blood they found me a room in a a private apartment that was wired for internet. It was in a nice neighborhood close to the university and allowed me easy access to the city center and social areas.
The airport in Medellin is about 45 Kilometers from the City. You take a cab over a mountain range to get to Medellin. The entire city sits in a valley between two mountains divided by a river. The temperature over the pass drops by about 30 degrees. You go from a coniferous pine forest like the Rocky Mountains, then descend about 3,000 feet into a semi-tropical rain forest. The temperature of Medellin year round ranges from 75F to 85F earning it the well deserved nickname of the land of eternal spring. I never got out of a t-shirt.
Spanish Architecture in Sante Fe de Antiochia
The cab dropped me off and I met my new housemate. He is an architect, speaks a little english and is generally charming and obviously gay. He has a tendency to refer to everything as Rico! Rico roughly means rich but Colombians use it as an exclamation of all things good or desirable. We had a cleaning lady and a cook. $400 dollars US paid for room and board, all meals and my laundry.
I start my routine of class every morning, working on the internet in the afternoon, going to the gym and then going out for the night. Colombia exceeded my expectations for language. My classes and contact almost exclusively with Spanish speakers has left me comfortably able to say most things I want n Spanish and if I have a patient partner able to understand casual conversation.
I had the good fortune to arrive at the beginning of Navidad. The Colombians celebrate the “Christmas season” the entire month of December. In particular they are in love with lights. Since they have unlimited hydro power and electricity is dirt cheap they go light crazy. The main event is a 2 kilometer long stretch of the river where they put a string of lights every meter with three different alternating colors. Then they create massive light sculptures. All month you can walk along the river eating small holiday pastries and drinking beer with the locals. This is the civic angle. On a personal basis they string lights on every window street lamp and tree. The effect is spectacular and you spend the whole season bathed in light.
The city itself has about 2 million people. It has small suburbs called pueblos which I fell in love with. The Medellin futeball team won its tenth title and the Colombian national championship. We went to one of the pueblos where the entire town had an all night barb-b-cue and dance party. Everyone ignored work for the remainder of the week. A nice aspect of colombia is that the company of extranos (foreigners) is sought after. At times I would find myself with different social groups actively competing for my attention. Its nice when in a foreign place to have the people want to know you.
I like in Colombia that the whole family gets involved. If your at social affair its likely that the cousins, the aunts, the grandparents and extended family are all present. For my birthday on New Years the girl I dated invited me to a party at her house. Another friend and I where going to go out for a few drinks first when we noted that the entire city was closed. New Years in Colombia is spent with your family. In this case I found myself with 45 or 50 of her immediate family members. It was definitely a contrast to previous New Years and a lot of fun. I invited the girl to join me at a dance club two night later and of course the whole family came along 
Ana and I at New Years with the Family
They key to surviving New Years with the Family
I did a side trip to a nature reserve called Rio Claro. Its about a four hour bus ride from Medellin toward Bogota. First up you have to appreciate the bus ride. You buy your ticket and get into the bus which is full. As soon as the bus pulls out of the official station where it is inspected you stop at the unofficial station and your numbers double. Seven of us sat in the drivers area complete with our luggage. Pretty soon you are wedged against some women’s breasts and slobbering on someone else as the bus bounces though the mountains.
The road we took was a main point of contention during the civil war. It still serves as a dividing line between rebel and government controlled territory. While driving through some of the most incredible nature I have ever witnessed, massive rivers, multiple thousand foot peaks and intermittent rainforest; every 10 kilometers there is a bunker made out of sand with a 50 Caliber manned machine gun. Your not in Kansas anymore.
Tour Guides Colombia
Rio Claro is amazing. The river is so clear you can see the bottom which is solid green marble. The water is so clean you can drink it (anywhere in Colombia). You feel like your in a bathtub.
Yes that’s Green Marble at the bottom
We did river rafting and hiking. Any suspicion I had that the guides where professionals vanished once the rafting began. They took off and my date and I swam, floundered, and nearly died while navigating class four rapids on a modified lolly pop stick. Casual reminders of a world without liability law.
There is a cave with a river that runs for about 1000 meters you can hike through. At the end it joins the main river and you can surf the waterfall our of the cave. We did not take the time to hike the whole thing but did enjoy playing in the waterfall at the mouth. I had a tick the size of missouri attach itself to me.
Cave Exit and Waterfall
The canyon walls have these million year old geologic formations that you can walk into. Seen her is a famous one called the woolly mammoth.
Stalagmite called the Woolly Mammoth
We stayed under the stars in these small open air rooms you rent and ate great food for days. In the evenings they have bonfires and hang out drinking beer. Its a wonderful relaxing place.
Sleeping Bungalows
On our way home we paid two soldiers a few bucks to stop a bus and get us a ride. The bus of course plays ridiculously loud Spanish music and the driver recently did a stint in hell. He has a set of police lights that he flashes before every curve to tell the oncoming drivers that they should no longer be using both lanes. Colombians have no issue at all passing on blind corners. It was so unnerving that I generally kept my eyes closed and considered taking up religion.
I made one gringo friend while in Colombia. A retired American painter named Ben. He was buying an apartment and settling down for he long haul. I hope when I return he is settled and I can mooch off his couch.
My time in Colombia passed in the blink of an eye. I feel like I did not even scratch the surface. I will go back and immerse myself in this amazing place again. The people that I met there and you know who you are travel with me now and I periodically count the days till we bailar y rhumba juntos otra vez
ITS A SMALL WORLD
I had one small side experience I think merits a few lines. I belong to an organization called the British American Project. Its a strange clandestine remnant of my old life when I still plotted world domination. Each year there are 20 people nominated into the program. In my year one of the people was an author I like named Po Bronson. He has two books I had read and was interested to meet him. The books are “What should I do with my life” and “The nudist on the late shift.”
The “What should I do with my life” book is all real life stories of people who had dropped their traditional path and did something Po thought was extraordinary. Over the course of our time together I had the pleasure of discussing some of the people with Po.
While in Medellin I was working out at my gymnasium and overheard a guy who was clearly not a native speaker. He was an American named Chi who had visited a few times and subsequently we ended becoming friends. It turns out he was one of the people Po wrote about in his book. Chi had graduated from an Ivy league school and decided instead of the corporate route he would set up a magnet school for underprivileged kids. Its been successful and he now runs this venture and has been written about in innumerable periodicals. A good guy and a fun coincidence.
Dear Users,
I think, this is one the best comments from Medellin – Colombia made for a visitor but i think he is a bit exaggerated saying the Colombian peso and the rebelions because those rebelion don’t manage half country; Now, the government manage all entire country of course, there are rebelions but this government has reduced that, crime and poverty. I think, this government has made a great things for Colombia. Furthermore, Colombia is one of the countries what speak a proper, perfect Spanish.
Kindest Regards,
Angela