Colombia

Colombia - our final destination in South America.

Abram and I flew from Lima, Peru to Medellín, Colombia a few days before New Year's Eve. Colombia is one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world. The maps below show the Andes Mountains splitting into three sections in Colombia, near their beginning (or end) in Venezuela - the Cordilleras Occidental, Central and Oriental.

Colombia is located in the equatorial tropics with altitudes from sea level to 18,800 feet. The capital, Bogotá, is at 8,660 feet. There's a green green lush coffee zone - Colombia is third in world coffee exports after Brazil and Vietnam. There's a large fertile area outside of Bogotá called the Savanna known for agriculture and dairy cows. The equator runs through Colombia. Jungles, rainforest, and the coasts of two oceans - Pacific and Caribbean. It would take too long to list the fauna! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_of_Colombia

Colombia has plenty of social and political problems - its border with Venezuela is a dangerous area - drug trafficking is a big issue, also sex tourism as it's called here. Colombia is the world's largest exporter of cocaine, along with oil, coal briquettes, coffee, emeralds and gold. It also exports over $2 billion annually in cut flowers, second only to the Netherlands. The long school (summer) holiday is mid-December through the first week of March, so we've seen lots of local families on vacation. Colombians seem very friendly and low-key; a nice vibe overall, and lots of beautiful and varied scenery.

Medellín is nicknamed the City of Eternal Spring due to its year-round temperate/warm weather, although I think that was prior to climate change because it was hot! It's located in a central region of the Andes at about 6,500 feet, in a river valley - Valle de Aburrá - surrounded by beautiful mountains. It's the capital of Colombia’s mountainous Antioquia province and is not far from the edge of the Coffee Triangle.

Those of us who remember the '80's and early '90's tend to associate the word Medellín with the notorious drug cartel that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. At its peak the cartel's trafficking routes and international smuggling networks supplied at least 80% of the world's cocaine. They smuggled coca paste into Colombia mostly from Bolivia and Peru, refined it, and smuggled it north through South Florida and the Caribbean. Pablo Escobar was killed at a private residence in Medellín in 1993, just over 30 years ago; the cartel dissolved by the late '90's. There is a museum here about him and tours of his home and hacienda, but many Colombians would prefer to ignore the fact that he ever existed.

A copy of Fernando Botero's 1999 painting "The Death of Pablo Escobar".

I saw the original at the Museo de Antioquia.

Medellín has worked hard to change its image and is now a center for the digital nomad scene, with an extensive fiber optic network and many co-working/living spaces. They've recently released a new digital nomad visa allowing foreigners to live and work in the country for up to two years.

It's also a green-leaning city. There are "green walls" everywhere:

They've worked hard to improve life for residents who live high up on the mountainside; tiny roads made it tough (impossible?) for vehicles to get up there so people needed to trudge up and down every day. One area, Comuna 13, was provided with 6 large outdoor escalators about 12 years ago, transforming the neighborhood.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/colombia-medellin-neighborhood/index.html

Comuna 13 has become a home for street artists and is a magnet for tourists; some say it's becoming too gentrified - time will tell.

(Not my photos):

A few random pics from around the city:

Gotta love a store that sells only rice pudding!

I went into bustling Centro to visit the Museo de Antioquia. Antioquia is one of 32 departments in Columbia; Medellín is the department capital. The museum is really fabulous! It's located behind the eye-catching Rafael Uribe Uribe Palace of Culture, also called the checkerboard building...

... on the Plaza Botero, which is filled with his wonderful sculptures. Fernando Botero was born in Medellín.

Inside the museum they had more of his sculptures and a large selection of his artwork in a variety of media, including the original of the image above of the shooting of Pablo Escobar.

There was a temporary exhibition showing work from the Coltejer Art Biennials, four exhibitions between 1968 and 1982, featuring artists from all over Latin America. It was modern art and somewhat controversial at the time; there were some marvelous pieces!

Another temporary exhibition showcased artist, tango dancer, feminist and all-around rabble-rouser Dora Ramírez.

From the blurb at the exhibition: " 'My mother's greatest work of art was life,' said Dora Luz Echeverría, in a talk prior to the inauguration of 'Estridencias/Emanaciones' at the Museum of Antioquia, which commemorates the centenary of the birth of her mother, the artist Dora Ramírez."

Dora Ramírez was born into a society family in Medellín and studied ballet as a young girl. As a teen she wanted to become an artist and cleverly convinced her stuffy father that dance was the work of the devil. He let her stop ballet and start art lessons, never knowing how revolutionary she would become in her artwork - and in her life, even though she led a society matron's existence. At 50 she stopped painting and became a tango dancer, something she'd wanted to do for over a decade. Below are some samples of her work, including a photo of her dancing. Very cool woman!

Self-portrait as magic woman.

Her interpretation of the famous statue of Bolívar naked on his horse, located in Pereira, Colombia: "Bolívar en el caballo de Rousseau".

Her homage to Carlos Gardel, the most famous tango singer of all time, who died in an airplane crash in Medellín.

Dora with both feet off the ground!

We spent 5 days in the very touristy neighborhood of Poblado, including New Years Eve. Our hotel room had a lovely balcony overlooking the city and mountains so we decided to dine al fresco chez nous on NYE, and made a quick trip to the grocery store just before it closed. It was fun seeing everyone grabbing supplies for a variety of parties and gatherings, from high-end charcuterie and champagne to chips and beer. Our dinner was complemented by a bottle of Lambrusco Abram had cleverly purchased earlier in the day. View from the balcony:

A couple days later we left the Poblado neighborhood and moved to Envigado, a small town just south of Medellin. We took the bus down there on New Year's Day to check it out - I had read a travel blog by a young Canadian couple saying they spent a month living in Envigado and really liked it - just regular life, no tourists - and we wanted to see for ourselves. Here are a few pics of the town, the main square, and people out in front of their houses making the traditional pork and white beans on NYD.

We moved into a little apartment on a residential street and got some "Colombian Starbucks" - Juan Valdez coffee:

Envigado is proud of being a city that cares for wildlife; here's a poster I saw announcing 5 new animal safety crossing corridors - pasos de fauna - Envigado has more than 40 of them! Some are tunnels, some are passageways through the tree tops, some are on land, quite a few near the airport; the town is well-known in Colombia for its efforts to protect its wildlife:

A tree-top paso de fauna.

Envigado was the home of writer/philosopher Fernando González Ochoa - there's a nice little museum in his former residence, which he called Otraparte - or elsewhere/another place.

"I am from somewhere else."

Abram went on a three-day adventure to hot springs and coffee country, basing himself in Pereira, where the statue of nude Bolívar is located. His actual destination was the beautiful and rustic Termales San Vicente, running along a river in the hills. Pereira and nearby Salento are well-known towns in the coffee-growing area; it has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site called the ‘Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia’. Due to the very specific geographical area, close to the equator and on the slopes of the Andes, the region produces two coffee crops a year. https://www.baristainstitute.com/behind-bean/colombian-coffee-grown-sunny-slopes-andes

A few shots of the baths, the route to Pereira, and a piece of furniture that gives new meaning to "coffee table":

I took a day trip 1,000 feet up the mountain from Envigado to a 170-year-old family-owned small coffee plantation. It was a great little tour - we learned a lot about coffee production around the world, and went out into the property to pick some coffee cherries ourselves, also learned about sorting, drying, planting etc. Then a nice lunch and a coffee tasting. A few pics of the day including the drive up the mountain, plus my fellow travelers and me in our

Juan Valdez garb:

After a few days in Envigado our next destination was Bogotá, which I really liked. It's big and bustling and has really good energy. It's nestled up to the Eastern Hills, providing great views and dramatic skies.

We stayed in two neighborhoods: Parque 93 and Chapinero, the latter on the edge of Zona G ... G for Gastronomica. Lots of restaurants of all sorts of cuisine.

They have a good public bus system, although the turnstiles (which many South American public buses have) were modified some years ago to keep people from sneaking under the turnstiles and it's really hard to squeeze through now:

I did a couple of art and history days, visiting the Museum of Modern Art, the Gold Museum, the National Museum of Colombia, and the Botero Museum, plus a lot of street art and cool buildings. At first I wasn't going to go to the Botero, having seen so much of his work in Medellín, but then I learned that the building itself was very beautiful and that he donated not only 123 pieces of his own work to the museum (and the country) when it opened in 2000 but also 85 pieces from his incredible personal collection - Picasso, Ernst, Soutine, Chagall, Renoir, Giacometti, Calder, Bacon, Freud, Dalí - and dozens more. The Gold Museum was mind-blowing: the myth of El Dorado - the fabled city of gold - came from this area:

Here are some photos from the museums and the streets. I'm sorry not to have stayed longer in Bogotá. It really had a vibe I liked a lot. Maybe some day I will return.

These last two images relate to emeralds - Colombia mines and produces the most emeralds for the global market, as well as the most desirable. It's estimated that Colombia accounts for 70–90% of the world's emerald market.

Abram had a chance to see the famous Bogotá savanna on his day trip by bus to a hot springs resort a couple of hours away.

Our next stop was Cartagena, down on the Caribbean coast. Well, it's sure to have some interesting aspects but the best thing about it for me was leaving it to go to the little beach town Rincón del Mar, about 85 miles southwest along the coast. As one travel blogger pithily said, "Cartagena is hot AF." - another compared it to Miami in August (ugh). Founded in 1533, Cartagena de Indias was a major slave market and a port for ships taking gold and other riches to Spain. One ship sank with a huge cargo - the galleon San José - controversial plans plans are afoot to bring the ship and its contents to the surface later this spring:

https://thecitypaperbogota.com/culture/colombia-to-recover-artifacts-from-san-jose-galleon-in-2024/

From Wikipedia: "San José was a 64-gun, three-masted galleon of the Spanish Armada de la Guardia de la Carrera de las Indias. It was launched in 1698 and sank in battle off Barú Island, just south of Cartagena, Colombia, in 1708, while laden with gold, silver and emeralds worth about US$17 billion as of 2023." Whew!

We spent a total of 4 days in Cartagena, mostly cowering in the air conditioning, searching for shade by the hotel pool or exploring a bit after sunset. There's a walled city and an extensive old town but the only photos I got were from an air conditioned taxi. Too hot to wander the streets and too many people hassling you, trying to sell you stuff.

To get to Rincón del Mar we taxied to the big bus station and got on a nice air conditioned bus to San Onofre, then a local driver the final 10 miles to the beach town. The bus driver was so nice and fun; I took a couple of videos:

Rincón is a tiny town with a lovely beach, a few dozen hostels, a couple of small hotels and a smattering of little restaurants, including the obligatory neohippie-yoga-veggie place and a French restaurant, which was closed wah. French friends had originally told us about the town and the restaurant; Abram also had it recommended to him by some travelers he met at the hot springs near Bogotá. We're so glad we went!! Really sweet little place. Our hotel was about 30 feet from the water's edge, incredibly balmy water.

January 20 --- Back in Cartagena today; flying to Panama City tomorrow. You can pretend this is a picture of me in the old town instead of a picture of a picture on the inside of the elevator door:

After 9-1/2 months of travel throughout South America, we're now on our way to Central America and then to Mexico, making it a complete Latin American adventure. South America has 12 countries plus 1 French territory - we visited 6 of them. With our slow travel mode our shortest stay was in Uruguay, 10 days. Colombia just over 3 weeks. Brazil and Peru 5 weeks each. Chile almost 2 months, Argentina a total of 4 months over several visits. Political/social issues kept us away from certain countries - Venezuela and Ecuador, for example, with all their troubles - just last week this creep escaped from prison in Ecuador:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Adolfo_Mac%C3%ADas_Villamar

We feel like we've gotten a good overview of South America - there's much more to explore!

Two final things from Colombia - one intense and sad, the other fun. You can't spend time in the area of Colombia near Panamá, and be about to jump on a plane to easily travel to Central America and northward, without thinking about the people, the families, that are struggling to get to and across the Darién Gap every day. A town called Turbo, 270 miles from Cartagena and 200 miles from Medellín, has become the immigrant center and the jumping-off point when leaving Colombia. While relaxing on our lovely little beach it was a grim reminder that just a couple of hundred miles away people are risking their lives for a better life.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fg-immigration-trek-america-colombia/

The fun thing is the word "chévere" - Colombian slang meaning cool/groovy (although Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Cuba all claim it's their word, too, haha). Remember the spoken beginning of the Stevie Wonder song "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" - "...Paris, Beirut, Iraq, Iran... I speak very very fluent Spanish... todo está bien chévere..." Ever since that song came out I wondered what the heck he was saying - Chevrolet?? What?? And now I know - chévere!!

Tomorrow morning we leave Cartagena for Panama City where it will also be hot AF but it will be very exciting to see the Panama Canal. More coming later in the Central America blog installment.

Adios, Sudamerica!