When I met Ray on the street back on day one, we both had plans to go on a graffiti tour at some point. He was going to hire a guide/driver. We decided to go together and I would show home the joys of cheap travel by using the metro to get to a free walking tour.
The Poblado metro station is about a 15 minute walk, straight down hill from my hotel. The tour started at 9:30. Ray and I met at the park nearby at 8:30.
The tour is in Comuna 13. There are 16 (,or 20) districts in Medellin. It is a very big city. Four million people. Comuna 13 is up in the hills. And was ground central for the guerilla conflicts from the 70s to the early 2000s.
After things stabilized and the killings stopped, the people started using graffiti to attract tourists. Once the tourists started arriving, the city put in some infrastructure to support the industry, namely escalators. It is all hills and stairs so the escalators were a nice break from more steps.
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| This wasn't part of the tour, I just like it |
But first, some break dancing!
I won't get this right, but Comuna 13 has four pillars of street art, graffiti, break dancing, hip hop music and one more that I can't remember. It is a busy place, visually, kinetically and aurally. There is colour, sound and movement everywhere. The word cacophony was used (by me).
We walked through the neighbourhood and heard about the history. Guides here do not say Pablo Escobar's name. On this tour, he was Mr. Potato Head. I guess when you saw dead bodies in the street as a regular occurrence and you have dead and missing relatives, you don't need to be blasting the name of the person responsible over a loud speaker for the population to hear all day long.
The history goes on to the government bringing in the American army, tanks and helicopters to squash the rebels.
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| This basketball court was used for executions of rebels, whether they were actually rebels or not. |
The murals all are about the conflict, the military, the killings (by rebels and government). There are very specific animals and symbols our guide pointed out. Once you know what they mean, you see them everywhere.
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| Lots of faces, particularly women who held the community together when the men were dying or disappearing. |
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| The hummingbird represents the Blackhawk helicopter and the beetle, the tanks. |
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| Birds mean freedom |
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| Monkeys mean evolution |
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| Giraffes mean heart |
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| Elephants mean memory. This one is full of children's hand prints |
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| Big cats represent strength |
We rode up and down the escalators (no one calls them funiculars, which in my opinion takes the fun out of funicular). We had some coffee lemonade and ice cream (I had cheese flavoured - yum!)
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| Coffee lemonade, better than it sounds but still not better Tha just plain lemonade or just plain coffee |
And that was the tour. By the end, Comuna 13 was so full of tourists you could hardly move. I realize the tourism industry brings in the dollars but the residents must absolutely hate us.
Ray and I went for lunch after that at a place in Comuna 13. If we're making their lives miserable, might as well drop some money.
It was Sunday so they had a special menu del dia, some meat soup thing only on Sundays. Ok. It was a lot of food.
And that was basically the day. We had coffee at some point and then took the metro back to Poblado and went out separate ways.
I was going to add day four but this is long and it's four in the morning so I'm going back to sleep.
