I got this far drawing the Raphael Uribe Uribe Palace of Culture in Plaza Botero… WHEN ALL OF SUDDEN!. ….(click on Video Link below drawing.)

That Cabeza Grande getting rained on in the video was done by the same artist that the plaza it is in is named after: Fernando Botero, the most famous Colombian artist. You may recognize his painting style, in that all of his figures are very volumetric. I was never a fan of his paintings, but his sculptures are fantastic. (click link for 7 other images)

Going from the sweltering Caribbean Coast to a comparatively cool valley in the Andes is quite a shift. Medellin is temperate, and called the City of Eternal Spring for a reason….as in, thunderstorms are scheduled for the next week. To be fair, I did come during Colombia’s rainy season. And it rains for an hour and stops…mostly.

Also, there is way more funk and historical mojo in Cartegena. Medellin is a modern city with a great transportation system, that even has cable cars into the mountains as an integral part of the network.

The view outside my apartmento in the upscale El Poblado neighborhood. Not all of Medellin is like this, as I elucidate on further down.

IMAGES FROM EL POBLADO

Global Notoriety

30 years ago, the drug lord Pablo Escobar was still alive and living in Medellin, which had one of the highest murder rates in the world. Now it is being featured in New York Times as being one of the top 6 cities in the world when it comes to reimagining civic planning, specifically the Metro transportation system, has cable cars as an integral part, which connects the rural communities at higher elevations, giving them access to the city. The residents are very proud of their Metro system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/world/cities-urban-development-lisbon-paris-sydney-singapore-durban-medellin.html

That said, the taxi ride today to Plaza Botero today was eye opening:

A) All Medellin drivers seem to be very comfortable being very close to one another. Their safe braking distance is a few feet. {Stay relaxed and stop pressing your right foot down on the floor.)

B)The destiny of street commerce in some areas is more than I have ever seen in my life. As in, packed stores filling sidewalks with chairs, or appliances, or metal doors, or everyting…on a one lane street while pedestrians swarm between cars not moving.

C) Right in the middle of all that we passed a cross street that was literally filled with 6 foot piles of trash as far as I could see, that was swarming with the homeless. On another avenue, street vendors laying out every imaginable item on every square inch of free space. It sounds familiar, but the density and quantity is over the top.

D) The Taxi driver calls to a banana vendor, gets two , and offers me one. Very nice! Then he throws his banana peel outside into a pile of trash that a man is sitting in. Both see no irony in the occurance. My Taxi driver then hands me a flyer with bible verses and Jesus quotes. I see irony in that.

E) We arrive at the Plaza Botero, which is surrounded by police fencing, and has an entry tent with police on guard….I step inside the familiar tourist reality, which obviously needs poliing in order to exist.

MEDELLIN