Where do I begin! Medellin, Bogota, and Panama

First off I just would like to express my sincerest apoligies for not updating the blog in over a week and half. I kind of feel like I let everyone down on the job, but I do have some honest excuses. I was a little burnt out from blogging every other day for the first half of March, I mean, these things can take 3-4 hours to put up and most of the time I am doing it on a circa 1995 computer with half the keys that stick or are in the wrong location. Sometimes the connection is so bad that I will type for 2 minutes and then have to wait for a minute for the words to materilize on the screen (mistakes and all). Second and more importantly: the past week has been what they call "semana sante" or holy week on account of Easter. They really, really, really take their easter seriously in all of South America and Central America; everything was simply closed from this past Wednesday until Monday of this week. Internet cafes, restaurants, stores, everything was closed for almost the entire week; it was absolutely unbelievable. Then on Monday when they were finally open again, I took the Panama Railroad north to Colon and Portobelo where there was no internet to speak of. I am now in Bocas del Toro Panama and I am back up to bloggin. I am going to spend the next day or two filling you in on what I have done over the course of the past week and half...

Medellin, Colombia, Mid March 2008:

After a grueling 33 hour bus ride from Bogota, Stewart and I arrived into Medellin, Colombia. There are monumental differences between Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Get this: they have... ... TRASH CANS! This simple act of defiance against the gods of dirt is the first step towards general public cleanliness, better infrastructure, and a better living conditions for the people of Colombia. You dont belive it until you see it, but it is totally the norm in other countries to take whatever trash you have and leave it where you stand. In Quito Ecuador's beautiful manicured public parks, infinite piles of trash dot the lush green grass from where people have picknicked every Sunday. I suppose that the trash, like the dirt, is such a part of their daily lives that they see no difference in it or a verdent lawn. However in Medellin the winds of change are blowing, and fortunately not pushing along much trash as they do!

Medellin is also home to Colombia's only, and as far as I know South America's only Metro! Begun in 1984 and finished in 1995, it is an elevated, beautiful, state of the art, light rail. Ripping through the city on the way to our hostel in a hugely spacious modern metro, while admiring the green grass of highway medians, (this was the first median, or highway for that matter, I had seen in South America) we might have just as well hopped a concord to France for all I knew.

It is hard to believe that a mere 15 years ago this city was the de facto kingdom of Pablo Escobar and the largest cocaine cartel ever.

Stewart getting his new balances shined

As Stewart and I went out that night, we also experienced several other firsts for South America. I will preface this by saying that usually when definitive gringos such as myself and Stewart go out in Ecuador or Peru, my pasty white skin, random pimple, blond hair, and unnaturally tall physique is a definite chick magnet. It is the one chance that I get to stick it to all the unbuttoned shirt, tan, cut, and sexy latinos prowling my own country stealing my women. I will not go into the specifics of why they view white men more affectionately down here (meal ticket ahem...) but sufice to say that it exists. This was NOT the case as Stewart and I went out and partied with the whos whos of Medellin in Zona Rosa. The only gringos who partied here were broke backpackers which had left an indelible impression upon the members of the opposite sex. To top this off we were competing with bankers, stock brokers, and buisnessmen much more relatively affluent here than I could ever hope to be.

So we had to be content to drink our beers and look (stare), which was more than fulfilling for the short duration we hung around. After a good dorm room bed sleep accented by our neighborrs partying till 5 in the morning on account of St. Patricks day, we woke up fresh and tired to hit the streets of Medellin for a little cultural infusion.

I have one name for the art of Medellin: Botero, Fernando Botero. This Medellin native has made a name for himself over the last half century, prolifically painting and sculpting his way into veritable stardom. His 80 or so 4x life size bronze statues litter the city like they had been thrown from a seed spreader. His paintings practically fill up 2 or 3 large musuems here. So see Botero we did, and we saw, and we saw, and we saw. Using a palatte of simple colors with straigtforward delinitated accuracy, he paints figurative portraits of people. Their faces all potray the same umimpassioned ambivilant gaze that peers at you through small beady wide eyes. And their bodies... well every one of his characters is bulbously fat. I mean, every one of his subjects look like they could spend a couple years on the Subway diet and still stand to loose a few L B s.

The first few Boteros were dramatically intriguing, and I spent a good deal of time looking and analyzing his work. However after literally 300 plus works I saw of his, I became a little disengaged.


The next morning I took advantage of the public transportation, and for a 1 dollar ticket I was able to take the metro all the way to the top of one of the hills overlooking Medellin via a brand spakin new cable car that they had put in. As our ski-lift style cable car crested the first hill, I looked down and saw one of the shanty town suburbs that surrounds Medellin. It was here that I realized that even the best city in South America is not immune to the scourge of poverty where the less forturnate are pushed to the fringes. They are forced to live in mud walled homes with patched together tin roofs; this was the South America I knew. While Colombia might have smaller shanty towns than their neighbors to the south or the east, the towns still exist, and the people that live in them have the same impovrished life.






I found more homeless people sleeping in the streets, taking advantage of the peace and quiet of Samana Sante.




Also got to checkout an open air market they have in the Plaza Bolivar, items of interest were pigeon houses up in the trees and a man selling snails.





While Stewart chose to go check out the coffee region south of Medellin for a few days, I elected to get a head start on Bogota and came back from Medellin mid way through last week. We were scheduled to fly into Panama last Friday, and this gave me a few days to check out this incredible city as well.

I will put up more about Bogota and Panama tomorrow!

Till then take care

Merrill