Medellín

A few weeks ago, we made use of another opportunity to travel to Colombia, when a conference which Patricia was invited to speak at coincided with the Fiestas Patrias National Holiday in Chile. This meant that the country pretty much shut down for a whole week, which made it easier to escape form our work commitments for a few extra days.

The conference was in Medellín, Colombia's second largest metropolitan area, formerly also known as the drug capital of Colombia. In the last couple of decades or so, however, the city has managed to reinvent itself through investments in public transport, education and urban renewal. Of course, for our European standards, it continues to be a chaotic, noisy south-american city that is bursting at the seams, with slums crawling up steep mountainsides because they are simply running out of space to build more houses elsewhere. But compared to what it must have been like during the days of the Medellín Cartel, with more than 6000 homicides per year in 1991, it truly has shed its image and even transformed into a new hip tourist destination.

Since we are not really city dwellers, though, we were more attracted by the nature spaces that are easily accessible from the city. So for our first day, we had laid our eyes on a a little hike that starts in Comuna 8 and that ends up in Parque Arví, climbing Cerro Pan de Azúcar along the way. Getting to the trail head is almost a little adventure on its own, having to negotiate (by taxi) steep, narrow alleys that wind their way up through the mountainside that is occupied by this part of town.

Leaving city behind on the way to Cerro Pan de Azúcar

On a weekday the trails in Parque Arví aren't very busy

Being in the tropics, the countryside is very lush, green and flowery

As a little bonus, the hike finishes near the visitor center, which also happens to be the (somewhat unusual) location of a veggie restaurant called Cable a Tierra. Of course we could not head back down to the city without having a tasty lunch there first.

Enjoying the laid-back atmosphere and great food at Cable a Tierra in Parque Arví

For the way back to town, we took the Metro Cable, which is part of the integrated public transport network of Medellín and which essentially are two cable car lines which connect the center of Medellín with the Comunas located higher up.

Enjoying the ride on the Metro Cable just above the tree canopy of Parque Arví

On our second day, we hiked up another hillside, starting at Bello and ending up at the San Felix Paragliding Centre, with a little detour to the Chorro El Hato waterfall. This one is a little more adventurous, i.e. the path less developed (twisting-an-ankle-potential and overgrown in more than a couple of places).

The Chorro El Hato waterfall

The hike itself, although definitely enjoyable and worthwhile, was meant to be only the overture to our main activity that day: paragliding above Medellín. We'd never done it before and actually ended up really enjoying it. Here is a little clip that was shot by Patricia's pilot (higher resolution here):

Our third and last non-conference day we finally dedicated to exploring a couple of city attractions, of which we particularly enjoyed the Botanic Garden (although it's not very big). And definitely the veggie food we sampled (our favourite: Justo in El Poblado).

Meeting the Iguanas hanging out in the Botanic Garden