Medellin

After two days of navigating jet lag in Panama city, we hopped a cheap local flight to Medellin, Colombia's second city. Geographically, the city lies 1500 metres above sea level; the drive from the airport offers breathtaking views of the the valley below, housing Medellin's 16 comunas. 

An intricate, affordable network of cable cars, dubbed the Metrocable, connect the hillier parts of the city to one another. Between this, the metro and taxis, the city is easy to navigate and we felt quite safe in most parts of town. Given the homicide rate is now lower than Detroit, that's saying something. 

Medellin's reputation precedes itself. In the 80s and early 90s it became the centre of Pablo Escobar's drug trade, taking the unenviable record as the world's most dangerous city. The scars of his legacy remain today but locals are keen to move on and through progressive mayors and local leadership, the city has cleaned its act up. Homicides have decreased by 95%, poverty by 66% and the only touting of Escobar is through tours of his former haunts and residences. Not really our thing. 

We spent the bulk of our three days in Medellin taking various tours before wandering the streets of El Poblado, the city's tourist hub. We ate in lots of cheap, trendy places, wandered the shops and dodged the on-again, off-again rain. Ceviche was the order of the day across Colombia and we tried it in its various iterations.

My pictures are few and far between from this part of town. It appears I saved phone space for our tour of Comuna 13.