I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of driving
into Medellín. So after a nice breakfast in my four stars hotel I walked down a
couple of blocks and took a minibus to the metro, and from there took the metro
to the downtown area. A nice lady guided my steps to downtown proper, where I
started by visiting the Cathedral (a monstrosity in brick if you ask me). 9 am
is not the best time for tourism, but I found an open travel agent and she very
kindly pointed me to the Touribus, a few blocks away. I had an hour to kill, which
I used to walk through the Parque Botero. Yes, this is the same Botero as in
Bogotá; the one with the fat people. True to form, throughout the park there
are 14 famous statues of fat people, horses, dogs, and cats. The Medellínos
love these fat statues, and appointments are often done to meet “En el Parque Botero, en la estatua de la
Venus gorda”. The park merges laterally with the Paseo Carabobo, a nice
pedestrian commercial street.
My Touribus arrived promptly at 10 am, and I basically spent
the whole day with driver Henry and tour guide Shelly. Besides the ongoing
commentary as we drove around we also made a few stops, where the bus would
wait for 15 to 30 minutes, to give the tourists the chance to walk around and
take photos.
Our first stop was at El Parque de Los Deseos, where the
city has built a planetarium, a music center, and very cool outside acoustic
shells (the type you can whisper at one of the shells and be understood 30 m
away by someone in front of a second shell), a very clever and complicated sun
dial, a skate park, an outdoor space with dancing fountains for the kids to
play in, a giant outdoor projection screen, and all sorts of gently sloping
surfaces to encourage the people to lay down, look at the stars, and dream.
Another cool stop was at El Parque de los Pies Descalzos,
where visitors are invited to ditch their shoes and walk on different
“textures”, like grass, sand, gravel, and water (I remember something similar
in Taiwan, and can tell you that walking on gravel is painful). I later
returned to this park, because it also had the Museo del Agua, which I wanted
to see (but it was on the minus side of cool, so I will not torture you with
its description).
Lunch was at the Cerro Nutibara, where there was a statue to
Cacique Nutibara, who fought the Spanish invaders, a superb observation
platform from which we had great views of the city, and the reproduction of a
Pueblo Paisa. Paisa is short for Paisano, and the folks from the Department of
Antioquia like to be considered Paisanos. In Mexico a paisano would be a
country bumpkin, but here the Paisano is considered a tough, self-reliant,
hard-working person. The Pueblo Paisa reconstructs the plaza, church, and a few
homes of a pueblo that was inundated in the recent construction of a dam.
Consider it mitigation of an unavoidable cultural resource.
Shelly also told us that next month they will be celebrating
the Fair of the Silleteros, and that this event has been considered an
intangible patrimony of humanity. Way back in time, wealthy travelers that
wanted to reach Medellín were carried sitting on a chair, or silla, hefted on the back of a silletero. Eventually carriages took the
people, but the silletero continued
using his silla to carry merchandise
from market to market. The most prominent were those who brought flowers from
deep in the valleys, so to this day there is a time in August when many
different community or business groups sponsor a silla de flóres to add to the color and gaiety of the fair.
Eventually I exhausted the views of the city, and to the
great alarm of the people I asked walked five blocks to the metro, took a bus
back to the highlands, and arrived home in good time to write this entry, have
a drink, and plop in front of the TV to see an action movie. I am now
reconciled with the city of Medellín.
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