Frederick Hume:  

Welcome to Medellin In my earlier note that might well have been entitled, “Escape from Panama,” I gave you some of the reasons (climate, cost of living, pollution, chaos, harrowing, if not life-threatening taxi rides, etc.) that we decided to move on. When I notified our banks of the countries we planned to visit on our travels, Colombia made the list, but it was just something possible, I had no idea when we left Seattle that we would actually be spending time in Medellin. I knew of it as the place of drug lords, gangs, and warring militias, with a reputation as one of the most dangerous places on earth. I had a photo of the beautiful walled city of Cartagena, Colombia fixed in my memory, so when my son mentioned on the phone that it was a place he had always wanted to go, we flew over from Panama and spent a week at the Hilton on the beach. When we arrived, the young man at the reception desk in flawless English asked where we were from while checking us in. There was a certain genuine humility about him that drew me in, so I probably shared more information than I normally do with a hotel clerk. But, I really liked him. He asked where else we planned to go in Colombia. “Nowhere!” He replied, “I’m from Cartagena, but, I’m pretty sure that if you like Cartagena, you will love Medellin. The climate is wonderful, the city is beautiful, and the people are very warm and friendly. Yes, I’m very sure you are going to like Medellin.” Was he trying to plant something in my mind? On our return to Panama City, the Toscana Inn was fully booked so we checked into the Novotel. It was there we became acquainted with Marco, a bartender from Santa Marta who encouraged us to see more of Colombia than Cartagena, and particularly Medellin. And then we became acquainted with a waitress at Del Prado, a traditional Panamanian restaurant in our El Cangrejo neighborhood, who told us we had to see Medellin, the city that she called home. When I told her a couple of weeks later that we had decided to leave Panama and move on to Medellin, large tears welled in her eyes. She said, “I miss it so much!” But despite these recommendations and a good experience in Cartagena, I still had some trepidation as I booked two tickets on an Air Panama flight to Medellin. We arrived at the Albrook Airport; a former US base served only by Air Panama way too early on the afternoon of January 4th. The waiting area and restaurants had been closed off so there was little space for the arriving passengers to hang out. The unrelenting heat and humidity of Panama combined with a lack of air conditioning in a small crowded terminal helped me get over some of my anxiety about leaving for Medellin. We cleared immigration at 5:30 for our 7PM departure on flight 304 and proceeded to the boarding lounge that was quickly filling around us. When they called the first class passengers at 6:30, we were next in line behind them. Shortly after we were seated, I noticed that the boarding appeared to have stopped. Strange! At 7, the captain announced that the flight was being delayed as a number of passengers were being held in immigration because of documentation issues. These were passengers that had cleared immigration and had been waiting in the boarding lounge with us. The captain gave us a revised departure time of 7:20, but it came and went. At 7:30, he came back to Betty and me to explain in English that he had no idea what the documentation issue was, but that he was as eager to get to Medellin as we were. That was reassuring. About 8:10 the remaining passengers boarded to our cheers and we left Panama at 8:30 without regret. I think we may have been shaking the dust off our feet. The rapid growth of Medellin over the past 20-30 years has led to a population by some estimates of close to 4 million people, roughly 20,000 people per square mile, putting it on the path to rival the population density of Paris. This compares to a population density of roughly 600 people per square mile in the greater Seattle area. The downtown city core contains the municipal and department (state of Antioquia) government buildings as well as the main shopping area. To the north, west, and east of downtown, the residential areas spread up the hills with slums predominating at the higher elevations. We would be staying in a southern suburb known as El Poblado. Medellin lies in the Aburra Valley high in the Andes Mountains. Because of its elevation, ~ 5,000 feet, and its location on the equator, Medellin’s days are warm (80’s to 90 F) with cool nighttime temperatures in the 50’s. The promise of spring-like weather had been one of the things that had been pulling us. Our first glimpse of Medellin was from the plane about fifty miles out. A rainstorm had passed through the Aburra valley earlier in the evening, so the lights of the city and its suburbs sparkled. The pilot announced over the PA system, “There is beautiful Medellin.” And, there was this vast sea of lights produced by 4 million people spread in the valley before us and bounded by the black mountains on all sides. I had been somewhat anxious that we might have difficulty clearing immigration as we were arriving with one-way tickets, but the official greeted us warmly with “Bienvenidos a Colombia,” took a brief look at our passports, stamped them and waved us though. (The experience was quite unlike Panama where they fingerprint both thumbs and fingers of each hand. Panama’s equipment had no problem capturing Betty’s fingerprints, but couldn’t capture mine to the extent of exasperating the officials.) We retrieved our bags and exited customs where another official greeted us with “Bienvenidos a Colombia,” a big smile, and told us that the fare from the airport to our hotel at San Fernando Plaza 45 minutes away, would be 60,000 pesos (~$20). He led us directly to a waiting taxi. The taxi was no more than a year or two old and very clean, in sharp contrast to the battered variety that had been our major transport in Panama. The driver (taxista in Spanish) was a man of middle age, well-dressed in slacks and sport coat, who welcomed us in a gracious manner as one who by nature displays the courtesies for which the paisas (people born in Medellin) are well known. He maneuvered the car smoothly onto the highway, a major thoroughfare without the endless bumps, potholes, and broken pavement that we found throughout Panama City. I was immediately struck by the cleanliness of the road and its shoulders with the absence of litter that pervaded every street and neighborhood in Panama, even in Trump’s neighborhood. The traffic on the highway moved smoothly through the roundabouts without the chaos that seemed a constant companion before. As we wound our way through the Andes toward Medellin I began to unwind and settle comfortably into the seat. Perhaps I wasn’t bringing Betty to just another 3rd world country after all. The staff at the Hotel San Fernando greeted us warmly, checked us in, and Jonny the bellman showed us to our pleasant room. The next morning we went down to the outdoor dining area at the 8th floor level for breakfast. There we had our first daylight view of the city as it spread out before us to the north and the south and up to the mountains on the east and the west sides of the valley. The air was fresh and crisp. My phone said it was 68 degrees. The buffet offered watermelon, papaya, pineapple, beans, chicken, pork, eggs, pancakes, arepas, pastries, and the most wonderful pineapple substance that completely erases the notion of Jell-O as a nutrition-free snack for kids. The waiters and waitresses seemed genuinely pleased to have us. At times they insisted on carrying our plate back to the table for us. Everything they did for us included the expression that we hear everywhere in Medellin, “Con Mucho Gusto!” (With much pleasure.) The entire breakfast experience combined with the ambience was so satisfying that Betty and I looked at each other that first morning in Medellin and said, “It doesn’t get much better than this.” The San Fernando Plaza is located in El Poblado a community south of the main city center about fifteen minutes away by taxi depending on traffic. The Plaza, which seems as though it would be quite at home in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, consists of four towers clustered around a plaza at the mezzanine level. One tower contains the hotel, another contains apartments, and the others contain six of Colombia’s largest banks, restaurants, a travel agency, two medical clinics, a dry cleaning establishment, a pharmacy, insurance firm, brokerage firm, a Toyota showroom, and a high-end dental clinic. The Plaza takes its name from the original Spanish colonial hacienda that H.M. Rodriguez built for his family at this location in 1932. A few of these modest traditional hacienda homes can still be found in the neighborhood mixed in and around the high-rise apartments. El Poblado is manicured, with clean streets and sidewalks, attractive planting, and modern buildings that reflect the rapid pace of Medellin’s economic development. A major north-south road, Avenue El Poblado, also known as 43a, crosses in front of the plaza and along with Avenue Las Vegas a few blocks to the west connects El Poblado and communities farther south to...Expand for more