2nd Nov - Medellin Day 1

Up around 11, shattered after the punishment bus. Got up and had a look around. Good news! We appear to have a pool in the hostel. Nice one. However, it's quite cold and rainy a lot of the time, so temper that excitement!

Pool - nice

Had breakfast in the hostel, then booked myself on the Escobar tour. This was leaving at 2.15, so walked to the local shopping centre for lunch. Totally weird place! It had clothes shops, shoe shops, a cinema, a food court, then completely bizarrely, on the second floor it was all IT shops. Not selling PCs or memory cards, but all hardware. Systems, networks etc in every single shop. It was Twilight Zone stuff - nightmare!

Twilight zone or maybe it's a Star Trek convention.

I barely survived anyway and made my back to the Pit Stop hostel where I was staying. Ran in to the sound Irish girls from back in Peru! Brilliant - there were only 3 of them on the rip in Mancora but now there were 5 of them. And they were heading on the Escobar tour as well. Excellent! 

So the bus for the tour came and we all got on. 8 of us. And now this is a bit ridiculous, all 8 of us were from Ireland. The 5 girls, 2 lads from Dublin, plus me. Turned out that one of the girls was a software engineer and the other 7 of us were accountants. 8 people on a random tour in a random city in Colombia and 7 of us were Irish accountants. There was some craic on the bus. 

Only Elaine on the right (green top) is not an accountant. Her loss!

Anyway, we drove to a different hostel to pick up one more lad. He was Irish too! So now 9 of us were Irish! We didn't ask his profession though. 


Tour guide was excellent and had lived in London for a yr so she had great English. And if she didn't know something she'd just ask her boyfriend for help as his English was spot on too and he came along on the tour too. One time she asked him "how you say sangria in English?"

Sound tour guide and the boyfriend

First stop was the house where Pablo Escobar used to live and where his brother Roberto still lives. Roberto was his right-hand man back in the day and gave up his professional cycling career to join the business.

Tatiana with the Escobars's first motorbike. Bought in the late 40s to transport drugs around the country

Blue car is Pablo's first, which he bought in the 60s for $7. The moved to this and away from the motorbike to transport drugs around Colombia

Sitting in the bullet proof van. Doors were seriously heavy and had space to put your gun to allow you to shoot out special holes if in the middle of a shoot out!

Roberto's bike from his cycling career - on that wall are loads of photos and newspaper cuttings from his career

Roberto's a bit fukked up though. He's nearly deaf and nearly blind and hasn't really got over the fact that Pablo is dead. All the furniture is from the 80s and it's really sparse in there. His prized possession is his photo of Pablo which he has enlarged and hangs near his front door. It's a photo which has never been used in any newspaper or magazine so means a lot to him. 


Weird thing was that this picture has a fresh bullet hole in it since just three WEEKS ago when armed raiders attempted a kidnap! 

Me with the rare photo of Pablo with the new bullet hole just beside my left elbow!

The guide was telling us that she had 10 lads in the minibus ready to do the tour when she got a call saying that she couldn't visit the house. They wouldn't tell her why. Turns out it was because they'd got wind of the kidnap attempt. Police were there when 6 raiders came, a bloody shoot out left 3 raiders dead and 3 arrested. And to think that if they hadn't had advance warning, all the backpackers would've been caught in the middle of it... scary. 


Got some photos with Roberto including one in the back of a revolving bookcase where the Escobars used to hide when anyone came! 

One of my favourite photos so far - me with Pablo Escobar's brother in the hideout they used to avoid being shot dead in their home in Medellin!

We left there anyway and we went to the house where Pablo was shot dead back in 94. Turns out that our driver on our tour bus used be Escobar's personal bodyguard and was also his driver for years! In 94, Jaime was a bodyguard, 2 wks on, 2 wks off with another lad. The day Escobar was shot, Jaime was off. Just as well as the bodyguard on duty was shot dead as well that day. 

House where Escobar was shot dead. He died on the roof of the first red building in the background

Then we went to the house that Pablo owned in his heyday. Massive compound, but it had all the best technology and decorations inside - we saw a video of the inside of the compound on the bus later. They had to leave it when a bomb exploded outside and nearly killed them. The location had always been a secret and now that it was known, they had to go!

Pablo's house - opulent

Next we went to the graveyard where Pablo is buried. Strange kind of place as Escobar is revered by many people because he was the first lad ever to offer hope to millions. These millions of lower class people who could never previously get jobs could now get jobs in the drug trade. In a country where there's no dole, unemployed people starve. So the respect these people had for Escobar is huge and they leave fresh flowers at his grave every single day.

On the other hand, Tatiana the guide said she was ashamed of the late 80s and early 90s. If there was one period of Medellin's existence that she could erase, it would be then. To see the contrasting views of the driver and the guide was fascinating. 

Back to the hostel then after the tour and the Irish girls fancied McDonalds. I said i'd head along for the craic even though I don't usually eat McD's and no way I was going to it in Colombia.

The girls seemed a bit embarrassed about lowering themselves to McD's so it was video time. My favourite bit is the way they all hide their faces but still horse away into their bounty!




Then we found a shopping centre and the girls went bananas with excitement at all the shops that were open. Exit Enright - stage left. I went looking for the Zona Rosa, where all the bars and restaurants are. Had a delicious pizza and usual wine, had to get a taxi back to the hostel with the downpour of sudden torrential rain. 
In to the bar, and there was the other lad on the tour who it turns out was from Galway. Time to see if he was an accountant too. Turns out that he was indeed an accountant but changed profession and is now in equity finance. Compleeeeetely different!

Had a couple of pints with him and a couple of girls who were in the bar. Anke from Germany but has lived in England for years and Mor from Israel. 

Then the Irish girls came in for a pint. There were 2 towns I really wanted to go to in Colombia called Salento and Manizales. Both supposed to be beautiful, both a couple of hours north of Medellin and the Irish girls were heading there next! Excellent They then told me that Salento and Manizales are actually south of Medellin, not north. Not so excellent. I'd ended up spending an extra couple of days bored in Cali cos I couldnt face the long 9hr bus to Medellin and all along there was this beautiful town just 3 hours away that I really wanted to go to. KRYYYSTE! Gutted. I wish I'd looked at a map!

Anyway, the barman was an Aussie called Daniel. And was actually sound! He was playing music over the bar's speakers from his laptop but anyone could take over if they wanted. Well I wanted. My exquisite taste meant we heard a few good songs. Then I discovered a song called "New Slang" from The Shins which comes from the excellent soundtrack to "Garden State". It's described in the film as a song that will "change your life", and while it's definitely not that good, it's still class and I was delighted that I was about to educate the girls on great music. About a minute into it, Anna stood up and announced that they were all heading to bed. I was completely outraged. Outraged! Fine... just go, see if I care! Huh!



After the Irish girls were gone, I chatted some more to Anke and Mor. Mor was telling us about her national service for Israel.  Sounded like absolutely zero craic, with her friends dying in wars etc. And she's only 21 now. 


Next couple of hours were spent looking up stuff on YouTube. I had never seen a video called Double Rainbow where a crazy Yank starts wailing with excitement about seeing two rainbows together in a National Park. Here it is:





And here's our reaction to watching this nonsense!




The night finally ended about 3am with us all crowded round the laptop watching Father Ted on YouTube. I was drunk and Speed 3 is one of my favourite episodes, so I spent the full half hour laughing uncontrollably and snorting at length. Charming.

Here's a clip from it:



Brilliant brilliant day.