Ten years ago it was unthinkable that any foreigner, especially North Americans and Europeans would visit Colombia and even rarer Medellin, the country’s’ second largest city. At that moment considered one of worlds most dangerous cities, especially in the 80ies and 90ies when runned by Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. Luckily this all started to change a couple of years after Pablo’s dead, and mainly when Sergio Fajardo became the Mayor of Medellin. Being an professor in mathematics, he was not like many other politicians and having this different, but very interesting and innovative mindset he launched the ‘Commitment of all the Citizens’ plan,also known as Social Urbanism. Interesting is that priority was given to areas with the bigger social and economic issues.
Many tourist nowadays are very curious about the Pablo Escobar’s history and various tours are organized, his grave and one of his houses/ now his brother’s house can still be visited. We chose explicitly to not join one of these tours, although it’s a very intriguing chapter in the history of Medellin we decided to rather focus on the city that Medellin is nowadays. Pablo Escobar has unfortunately put Medellin on the map for the wrong reasons.
To touch base down in Medellin and learn more about the city’s history in general and the architecture we decided to join the Medellin Free tour. And from there on planned to visit some of innovate elements, like the Planetarium, Parque Explora, the Spanish Library and to take the Metrocable all the way up to Parque Arvi, just to name a few. More about those visits in other blog posts, now back to the Free tour. This four hour tour that is hosted by Pablo – (yes! and NO not Pablo Escobar) from Envigado, Medellin, YES that was Pablo Escobar’s home, as he jokes himself. But no this Pablo has nothing to do with that history – he is actually very proud about ‘his’ city and very keen on showing tourists how Medellin has changed in a very positive way and is still improving the quality of life for all of it’s inhabitants every single day.
We met Pablo at the Alpujarra metro station together with about 15 other people who were joining the tour that afternoon. The interest in the Medellin Free Tour has increased significantly from when Pablo started his project and as he runs tours 3/4 days a week, his days are pretty long and busy. He arrived 3 minutes late and felt very very sorry about that. But, hey we’re all travelers who have enough time. Although he apologized several times nobody seemed to be bothered that he showed up just a little late. After a short introduction at the metro station we continued our way to the beautiful renovated train station, where Pablo was going give us the first part of his historical introduction to Medellin and not to forget some insights on the train station and the antique train system that nowadays unfortunately doesn’t function anymore. From the train station we continued to the administrative and financial heart of the city, there in front of Medellin’s town hall we sat down again and he continued his story about the city’s fascinating history.
The Medellin Free tour will talk and walk you through downtown, on the way you’ll explore the city’s historic districts and find out through fascinating stories about the history and by things out of the everyday life, how Medellin has lived up again. Some of the places that are visited during the tour are: Botero Square, Berrio’s Park, San Antonio’s Park, Bolivar’s Park & the Metropolitan Cathedral..
It was very interesting to spend an afternoon with people from different places in the world who all had the same interest and of course with Pablo who is an amazing person and guide and not to forget very knowledgable about Medellin, his city.
We would recommend anybody who visits Medellin to book the Medellin Free Tour, it’s a perfect introduction to this fascinating city.
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