January 21-24
Warning: this post has a few pictures for kids, but has some adult themes.
There is a Colombian saying “Don’t Give Papaya” that was spray painted all over the neighborhood we were staying in. It is a phrase that basically tells you not to let yourself be taken advantage of. If you leave out your papaya, someone is going to take it. I like this idea. On our trip, many people have told us where, when, how to be safe. Much of it we take to heart. But I think the main theme we try to follow is right in line with this phrase – don’t let yourself be taken advantage of. Don’t leave your phone sitting out, don’t wear flashy jewelry, be careful with your cash. Putting the responsibility on ourselves to stay safe instead of worrying about what others are going to do.
We arrived late to Medellín on Sunday and while I went straight to bed, Michael went out for a walk. We were staying in the trendy neighborhood of Poblado. For a few blocks in every direction the streets are lined with restaurants and clubs and all of those were packed with people partying. This is not our scene, but everyone online said this is the best area to stay, so we were going to give it a go. We soon realized the actual reason why this was not our scene. But first, a few things that we loved about Medellín:
The Botanical Gardens: we took the train from Poblado towards downtown to check out the Jardín Botánico which is a free garden right in downtown. Now, I come from a family that is obsessed with the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, so I was super geeked about this. We had heard great things both online and by friends who had visited. Word to the wise: don’t compare the St. Louis Botanical Gardens to other gardens. You will be disappointed. That being said, it only took me about 30 seconds to get over it and go back to be geeked about the gardens.
Most of our time spent was checking out this really cool lake. It had turtles:
And these cool ducks. It took me too long to get this picture, but the duck in back was in the process of eating a fish that was huge!! It is still in its neck when I finally got my phone out.
And then there was this thing. We couldn’t get any closer:
Super huge iguana, maybe? No way of knowing, but the thing could have been six feet tall from head to tail. It was huge.
Here’s us in the gardens and below is some more super cool street art.
We also spent some time at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art. Some of you may know that this is not typically my thing – modern art. It usually just feels like people trying to find the biggest shock and then calling it art. This rung true, for me, for the first exhibit we saw, but once we got past that, the place was awesome.
My favorite exhibit was a multi-part video project that had over 360 video interviews with random locals in 12 Latin American cities between 2005 and 2008. The questions were about democracy, U.S. interventionalism in the region, and U.S. foreign policy. All of the videos were subtitled in English. I read the above description after having watched the videos for probably 10 or 15 minutes. What was interesting to me is that although the people mentioned the U.S. in their answers, I wouldn’t have thought that the main theme had to do with the U.S.
The history of the U.S. being involved in Latin America is complicated and I don’t pretend to be educated well enough in the topic to speak about it here. I do know that at times the U.S. has helped over throw leaders and gotten involved where we probably should have kept our noses out. That said, of the videos that I watched in this exhibit, most people were ignoring the intervention issues and were more focused on democracy. They cared less about what happened in the past and more about what needs to be changed to improve their future, mostly looking to the U.S. as a guide for how to improve their country.
The statement that hit home most is that in the U.S., every child that is born is born with a future. Every child is born with a future. There are security nets in place to ensure that child will be educated, will be fed, will be housed, no matter who the child is.
I think listening to people talk about foreign policy is really interesting, but it’s been hard to get a real feel here in South America because everyone has been really polite. Super polite. And I think much of that goes back to a (here translated) sign in one of the small towns in Bolivia: Tourism is Existence.
Moving on. A depiction of Medellín and how the artist feels about so many people being in such a small space:
These were flies that were fashioned out of bullets and resin. The artist mentioned that just like flies, war is always present.
This one is just a nice painting that doesn’t make me think too hard.
The top floor had an outdoor garden with a great view of the city:
We also spent a lot of time in Medellín eating. First up, micheladas – they’re not just in Mexico! This one was mango and lemon and lime. 
And some delicious sangria.
This is the best dessert I’ve eaten in the past 3 months. This dish is essentially gooey butter cake with a caramel/chocolate topping that is then topped with Oreos. It was magical.
OK – so the city was clean, the food was good and every Colombian was wonderful to us. Now for the problem we had with Medellín: sex tourism. After that first walk around town on Sunday night, the main thing that Michael wanted to report back was how many prostitutes were around.
With a little careful online research I found an article that mentions you can buy Medellín guided tours online that includes underage prostitutes in the package. Also I found out that prostitution is legal in Colombia, but pimping is not. In recent years, with the increase in national attention, Medellín has supposedly begun cracking down on sex tourism. What we saw was not good and didn’t give me much confidence that the crack down is helping. There was a large number of normal looking tourists – couples, backpackers, etc. But the real majority of the people we saw around the Poblado neighborhood were 50-70 year old white men, often by themselves or with 15-25 year old Colombian women. It was awful and it really had overtaken this neighborhood. We spoke with a seemingly normal Irish dude who was in his 50’s that within 2 beers admitted that he was looking for “someone nice to have dinner with”. We saw him walking with a pimp and two 15? 17? year old girls a few hours later. He didn’t make eye contact with us.
Although both of us were upset by the entire thing, Michael could not get past it. He would point out random old white men without any women and accuse them of being creeps. Every white man became a perp in his eyes. Look at those creeps… what a creep… do you see that creep over there?
I know this happens in a lot of cities – it was just shocking how open these jerks were about it. I’m sure some parts of Asia will be shocking to me as well. For now – we’re getting out of dodge and heading to Rio. Sorry for the Debbie Downer post – go back and look at that Oreo gooey butter if you need a pick me up.