In which Layla and and Roz lose a finger and a wallet but keep their heads in a riot

By Layla

Our arrival to Medellin started off with less glamour than we had hoped, at a slightly hostelly hotel... But soon we were out in the streets and initial scariness rearranged itself into a very cool and stylish area abounding with hip bars and restaurants. We chose one called La Bicicletta (The Bicycle), and had a very pleasing late-ish dinner that involved lots of halloumi... We strolled home via a friendly Italian restaurant where we had a final glass of wine before bed. Cheery and pleased with having such a nice first night in Medellin, I popped into the bathroom, while I vaguely heard Roz saying something about opening the patio door. Five seconds later I heard a terrible, blood curdling shriek and dashed out to find Roz rocking on the bed, wailing in a way very uncharacteristic for a girl who hurts herself rather more than one might hope. I rushed to her in a panic, trying to find out what had happened. In fact, there had been two patio doors, and as one had swooshed past the other, it had cut off the tip of her finger. We looked down, the bed was a pool of blood, and we shrieked in a manner not befitting a doctor and a first aid veteran... 

Luckily the hotel was very helpful and nice, and the amount of finger lost was not very much, so before long she was disinfected, drugged up with extra strong Ibuprofen and the half bottle of wine from the minibar, and eventually we managed to get to sleep. An inauspicious start for our stay in Medellin... 

The next day was to be no better. Up bright and early, and guidebooks in hand, we walked down to the Poblado metro to head downtown. (Our hotel is in the posh, extra-safe, extra-nice bit where the cool young things of Medellin hang out). It was disappointing to find our hotel a half hour trek from the metro, but when we got there, all was well and we zoomed into the centre of town.

When we got there, it was all a bit hot and chaotic and confusing. We went to a plaza with big wax tree sculptures but we didn't really know what they meant. We walked down a pedestrian street that was a bit like Peckham. Then we got to Plaza Botero, a really cool square full of sculptures by Botero, one of Medellin's (and indeed Colombia's) most famous artists. His work is characteristic for being of 'fat' people though he apparently conceives them as being sensuous and mis proportioned to represent different things. The sculptures were great, but just as we whipped out a camera to take a photo of one, someone came up to us and said something in Spanish, which Roz figured out: "The rioters are coming! Take cover in the museum!"

The Museo de Antioquia (the region) was right there so, alarmed, we dashed in. It was full of Botero sculptures and pictures and was really quite interesting, and a cool building. But just as we advanced to the international artists room, the museum staff approached us. The riot risk was too great and they were closing the museum! Two minutes later we were unceremoniously dumped back into the square, with the loudspeakers from the approaching protestors ringing in our ears! We decided that we'd better abandon our sightseeing plans and rapidly found the metro and leapt upon it and found ourselves back in Poblado.

With the half hour walk up a hill awaiting us, we realized everyone else was boarding little green minibuses so we joined them, I paid, and were soon pleasingly being taken up the hill. I opened my bag to find something. I closed it, I think. Then someone came on the bus and started singing about peace in Colombia. I vaguely listened. Then we got off the bus, had sandwiches in a random sandwich shop, went to pay, and found that my wallet had been stolen! Cue much angst as while I'd spent the entire holiday only taking one card out with me and locking the rest in the safe, I'd managed to bring both debit cards and both credit cards - plus a wad of cash. And my lovely wallet. This was initially grounds for hysteria as we have a joint account and thus imminent zero access to a cash source! Luckily Roz remembered one of her cards wasn't linked to mine, and after canceling all mine, we dashed to a cash machine to get money out urgently. Only to have the card rejected. By three different machines! Things were feeling a bit hairy as we ran up and down the hill, seeking banks and glowering at the green buses... But after finding wifi and getting the bank to unfreeze the card they'd mistakenly decided had been stolen, and finding the one machine that accepted it, we were back in action! Then of course there was the small matter of the riots... We suspected that all things considered we should probably get out of Medellin - or indeed Colombia! Roz started researching options - Quito? Caracas? Florida? New York? We gave up, I stopped hyperventilating and hating myself, and we retired to a very cool New York-ish coffee shop on a really fab street with our books and our un-angsty life resumed!

That day had been pretty much a washout, but we could still recover the evening! And so we did - we made a reservation at Carmen, one of the fanciest restaurants in town, and had a spectacular meal (one of our best ever) and fab cocktails in a lovely setting and paid with our one remaining card, and all was right with the world. We looked at each other and grinned - maybe we didn't want to leave Medellin after all!

The next day we turned over a new leaf and suddenly Medellin was fantastic again. We walked down to the metro and met up with the Real City Tours guide, a delightful guy called Pablo who united us with the only other Caucasian people in evidence in Medellin. And so we set off on a really excellent four hour walking tour of downtown. Pablo had grown up in Medellin when it was the most dangerous city in the world. His narrative gave us a real vision of pre-war Medellin, what had happened to the town, what the politics were about, how much everyone hates the drugs trade, how the benefits of drug money to the city are pretty much all a lie, and the transformation from living in fear to living in what was named this year as the world's most innovative city. What was delightful was that his stories were so engaging that by the end of it, we were in love with Medellin, joyfully rooting for its ongoing success. Some of the transformation came through investment in infrastructure - building big, beautiful libraries in the most dangerous central squares and in the slums, building a fabulous metro system, linking the slums to the city with cheap, efficient cable cars, situating the Ministry of Education in a previous notorious drug den. We heard how people reclaimed the city and were wonderfully proud of it. We heard how Colombian people manage to be happy (which indeed we have found them to be - generally cheery and friendly and smiley). Essentially they seek to ignore all their many memories of violence, terror and sorrow, and overemphasize any good memories they have, taking delight in the smallest things, and being determinedly optimistic. The metro system is a symbol of this hope and delight. And how could I do anything but love a city whose citizens are filled with joy and pride by the existence of their public transport system! The tour took us past City Hall, and various plazas and churches (with prostitutes - or 'loving providers' - plying their wares outside), lovely statues and public art. I particularly liked seeing a Botero sculpture of a bird that had been bombed (several people died) - alongside a brand new identical statue Botero installed next to it as a symbol of hope for the city. I spent lots of the tour trying not to cry, with sorrow and also with how far the city has come. We had lunch in a delicious vegetarian Indian restaurant called Govinda. We chuckled at a building which was half beautiful, intricate European architecture...with one side plain stone with no decor at all - we heard the Belgian architect had left halfway through due to an argument and the Medellin architect who replaced him took one look at the blueprint, pronounced it far too complicated, and slapped up a plain wall to close the building. We also heard the Medellin philosophy of Papaya - if you get pick pocketed it's essentially your fault for enabling it through inappropriate levels of vigilance over your possessions - if you make something available, someone will take advantage of the opportunity. Apparently their 11th Commandment is 'Do not give papaya" and their twelfth is "If you give papaya, people will take it". It made me feel more philosophical about the loss of my wallet.

After the walking tour, we took the metro home with more open eyes, and after braving the green minibus with extra vigilance, we changed our flights and extended our hotel stay so that instead of returning to the potentially risky Bogota (all the news reports said that the downtown area of Bogota was a no go area) for our last 2 nights, we would stay in Medellin. After which we installed ourselves in our lovely coffee shop for a couple of hours of reading and drinking, had dinner in an excellent Arabic restaurant on a cool restauranty street, strolled down to La Bicicletta for a glass of wine amidst the Friday night hip party crowd, got excited about the cool things we still wanted to do, and felt very cheery about being in Medellin.