5 Medellin – Feet, Metro, Metrocable, Taxi. 12/24/2015. Christmas Eve in Medellin.

Bienvenido a Medellin – December 24 – Christmas Eve Day

I think I left off with me working and Mike sleeping last night… Given the situation, we opted for room service which was a bit complicated in that nearly everything on the menu had cheese.. I went down to the restaurant and discussed it all with the chef.. and we decided on a modified soup (potato, chicken, and some veggies.. no aguacate, sin queso, sin espicia)… basically sin todos (without everything)! Just bland.. and some toast, although when it came it was untoasted bread. We also ordered some risotto. but I wound up eating that.. and the chef thought that a simple tenderloin might be good too… but it all came at once, and the portions were really large.. so we donated the steak to someone at the hotel, along with my bouquet of roses… Not sure what we are doing with the champagne, which they traded for red wine… Can’t take it with us, and Mike is certainly not drinking it. Mike was pretty much dead to the world, and I tried in vain to finish the development of my course on urban governance (I didn’t quite finish.. but I did get a long way into it.. Next I need to develop the graduate course for “Strategic Influence” .. whatever that means.. )

The hotel has really been accommodating; their password is a string of about 12 numbers and we have so many devices, we are constantly calling for the password since we are too lazy to write it down… I think we are fully connected now, so all should be good.

For some reason Medellin has a lot of television in English (except news).. Once I got into bed and Mike woke up, we got sort of hooked on some program that’s a bit like Law and Order but it takes place in San Francisco… and in this series they are dealing with a crime that involved Oakland.. Pretty realistic as the SFPD captain says to his cops “You’ve got to take a trip… you need to go to Oakland.. ” in a way that sounded like they needed to pack their bags for the journey!

This morning we got  bit of a late start — needed to make certain Mike could actually bop around… Once he decided he could stand up.. and walk, and not need a bathroom every ten minutes, we headed out..

Walked the supposed 15 minutes (more like 30 minutes), mostly downhill to the metro station (Poblado)– passing a nice park and a lot of residential and commercial buildings. The Poblado neighborhood is pretty upscale, quiet, and fortunately not loaded with cops and security guards (actually we haven’t seen the swell of cops and guards here like you see in Cartagena’s upscale areas or like we’ve seen in Quito and some other cities. )

We figured out the system for buying tickets (which includes waiting on a very long line until you get to the counter. They don’t have automated machines to buy metro tickets which is surprising since the transit system is very modern and efficient). Got into fairly crowded train (like NY at rush hour, but people were basically polite, on their cell phones, and no pushing.. very civil), to the Estacion San Antonio where we navigated our way to the Metrocable which is quite sophisticated and should certainly be adopted by other Latin American cities that have similar geographic conditions.

As I mentioned in a previous note, Medellin sits in a deep lush valley at about 5,000 feet high, with a river that literally bisects the city. The hills that create the valley are covered with former squatter settlements that have been formalized and now streets are paved and these neighborhoods (which house about .75 million people) are served by buses and electricity and all the basic needs. There are schools and libraries and parks. Most of these dwellings that hug the hillside are concrete frame with brick in-fill (basic housing, mostly self-built, lots of add-ons over time). Anyway, about a decade ago, the city installed an amazing gondola lift system (they have three distinct lines) integrating the city proper and its metro system with the marginalized residents living in the hills and it’s very inexpensive to use them. They say it is the first cable-propelled transit system in South America. It is totally integrated into the citywide metro system, including ticketing (Once you are on any train you can continue on without purchasing another ticket, including the cable car.) My research says that the cable system carries 30,000 people per day.

We transferred at the San Javier station.. and just hopped on.. Basically, got off the metro train took an escalator up… and there sat (or rather ran) the cable cars… you hop on (about 6 to a car) as it is moving slowly in the station.. and then off you go. The line we were on (Line J) goes for nearly 3 kilometers.. I’m not sure how high up we were, but it’s a great ride. We got off at the very top station (La Aurora) to get a sense of the city’s vastness which is difficult to describe and more difficult to photograph… At the very top, the city has built new housing for low income families.. high rises (probably to replace housing that had to be demolished for the construction of the cable lines and the creation of “roads”. )

Then, despite some Colombian who was with family members (from the states, I think), using the system as a Disney ride and told us it was very unsafe to disembark and that we should take the “round trip” and then go back on the metro or a taxi, we got off at two different stations on the way down — strolled, smiled, photographed and wandered up and down different stair paths (where entry doors and houses abutted the narrow staired paths). Hopped on and off and then transferred to the Metro and headed back.. Decided to get out of the train station at San Antonio instead of changing for our train to Poblado to “check out the action”…

By the way, much fewer English-speaking tourists here in Medellin than in Cartagena. Cartagena has transformed itself into a tourist destination — safe, beautiful, great hotels, expensive restaurants — and many Americans are visiting. Indeed you hear a ton of American English on the streets (not at that Mercado).. That was strange for us, since most of our travel (other than the summer European travel) has been in countries where very few Americans go.. and we don’t hear English. So this was different.

Well, San Antonio neighborhood is a “happening place” — it’s a full on assault on all your senses… Music blaring from everywhere, body-to-body people in the streets, hawkers, traffic (mostly stuck and not moving), food in push carts. The streets are lined for about a mile on both sides with shops, peddlers, pushcarts, and more.. We thought we’d duck into a side street to get a little air and quiet and it was even worse. Anyway, we were pretty hungry and since Mike’s stomach is still not quite back to normal, we checked the trusty iPhone and saw there was a little “vegetarian” restaurant just a few blocks away. We trekked over and nearly missed it. It was just a door on the street; the “restaurant” was up two floors. We decided to chance it.. I think it’s really some kind of Indian yoga place that has a cafeteria. We joined the food line.. not really certain what we had.. soup, some rice, some mixed vegetables, something extremely sweet (that we did not eat), and juice that we did not drink (didn’t want to risk the water).. But it was fine.. All served on metal plates — either ultra hip or prison style.. take your pick. By then after coming back into the chaos of the streets and heading back to the metro, Mike decided he just wanted a taxi since after the train we’d have the one mile uphill walk back to the hotel.

Getting a taxi wasn’t so easy. Many were empty and didn’t want to pick us up (like NY) and some were driverless (double parked but no driver), and one driver was making out on the street leaning against his taxi with his girlfriend. We stopped a cop (By the way, Medellin cops wear very special uniforms that are Italian design), and he went to the taxi we had seen (where the driver was quite engaged with his girlfriend)… When the cop realized, he said “este taxi es occupado”..

Finally, we got a taxi but he really didn’t know his way around to our hotel… he asked a lot of people, and together with what we remembered from our walk, and the iPhone map, we arrived back at Hotel Park 10.

Mike is napping and then we are headed to 7 pm “mass” at the grand basilica in the old section.. I was on a mission to light a candle for a very dear friend..

From the mass, we’ll take a taxi back to out neighborhood for dinner..

More tomorrow.

Fern

PS — If I were to organize the trip again, I’d probably skip Cartagena (despite how totally beautiful and restored it is) and spend more time in Medellin to really understand the city .. probably requires at least 5 days to get a feel… longer to “understand it”…. and we’ve only got 3 days.. Definitely not enough.. And for those who have asked.. the weather is fine, a little hot for me, but I melt at 80 degrees.. Delightful at night..