Bienvenido a Medellin

Hola amigos! After spending a full quarter in Toronto I'm back in travel mode. It was great spending that much time back home but I was itching to get back out there especially with winter coming.

The plan is to spend my time working from here until mid December and then head somewhere that has a beach to spend Christmas and New Years there. If anyone has any recommendations for where is fun for NYE in South America give me a shout.

I tried to head to Colombia with no expectations but that proved to be almost impossible because of the negative media headlines that dominate almost every story about this country. As a result most people associate Colombia with shootings, drugs and hookers. Is there any of that here? Of course there is (especially the last one), but it is grossly exaggerated. The drug story behind Medellin is pretty simple. There was the Medellin Cartel that dominated the drug trade in the 80's and made Medellin the most dangerous city in the world (by homicide rates). That changed by the late 90's when the cartel became defunct and the city had a string of decent politicians who turned Medellin into the gem it is today. Homicides since then are down 95% and in the region of El Poblado where I am staying, there is almost zero. It is actually considered a safer city than many major US cities like New Orleans, Baltimore and St. Louis. Try wrapping your mind around that.

I learned a lot about the psychology of fear when planning this trip.

People greatly overvalue risks that are infrequent and undervalue risks if everyone around them is doing.

Most people have stories from their friends who have visited Colombia but it's a fraction of all the people that they know. Whereas, almost everyone in people's circle drive cars. The rate of deaths from traffic accidents is 12.4/100,000 people. Close to 5 million tourists visit Colombia each year and reported deaths last year were 20 meaning the death count was 0.4/100,000. But those, cases received a lot more attention than even 1000 traffic deaths put together.

What about this for another ubiquitous example of risk. Everyone knows the commonly purported 50% rate of divorces, and that's just what's reported. What utility maximizing, rational actor would pursue an activity that has a 50% chance of yielding an incalculable emotional toll, legal troubles, and a significant financial loss? Yet, people dive in headfirst all the time without considering the risk. Of course, there are other considerations to be made when talking about relationships like the emotional aspect which can interfere with reasonable judgement. My point from these examples is that people are terrible arbitrators of risk and that if people tried to be consistent in their application of risk profiles to more activities across the board, their lives would look a whole lot different.

To avoid making this a blog about psychology, let's get to the good stuff.

Why did I pick Colombia? I think a lot of my initial motivation to come here was the stories I heard of all the bad stuff that could happen to you. It appealed to my adventurous side and maybe that's a cocky thing to admit but I guess a part of me wants to test the limits. The second and more important is that one of my closest travel buddies - Dan, that I met in Mexico came out here at the beginning of the month with his pal - Daraab. They are both staying until late December so I figured if I came here I'd get to see a place that I've been dying to see and I'd get some great company along with it.

No brainer right? So I booked a flight and a friend of mine named Nathan (Nate) that I worked with at my first job out of Uni wanted to come check out the lifestyle I've been living for like a year and a half.

Last week we got on a flight on Thursday night. We flew into Bogota for like 5:30am and missed our connecting flight to Medellin so we had an extra hour to kick it while we waited for the next flight. Nothing like waiting in a Colombian airport at 6am on zero hours of sleep, knowing you have work in 3 hours.

We made it to my place in time for work and luckily my landlord let me check in early so we didn't have to crash at Dan's place who had informed me he'd pretty much been on an 11 day bender since he got to Colombia. My place was surprisingly nice and the host was super helpful. Nate went and checked into his own place which took him two hours and a host of strangers on the street to help him locate it.

It was noon on Friday now and I knew I was in for a helluva weekend because it was my bday on Saturday so we were going to send it hard. I napped until the early evening until Nate and I hit the town at like 7pm to get our bearings and find some good spots. As most first nights in any new place are, it was pretty blurry. We hit a string of bars until we ended up at a club that had been recommended to us by a patron of a restaurant we ate at earlier. Somehow, I ended up getting split up from Nate and with neither of us having cell signal and Nate being alone in a foreign country for the first time, it's a miracle we both made it home without issues. Understandably, Nate chewed me out the next day for letting that happen.

Saturday comes around and I'm officially 25 years young feeling like and 80 year old with osteoporosis and a concussion. I nurse myself back to health with some cafe food and a coffee right next to my place and head off in the city to run the necessary errands. SIM card, Colombian pesos and a gym membership. I walk like 30 minutes on a side road until I get to a mall where I'm the only white person and a foot taller than everyone (and I'm not tall). My mediocre Spanish gets me all the things I need and I head back into my neighborhood to find Nathan and walk around some more.

Nighttime comes around and the plan is to head to Dan and Daraab's place to catch up and head out to a rooftop bar where they made a reservation. They invited some girls they met, none of which spoke English. So we've only got 1/4 guys that speak Spanish and 4 girls that only speak it. We all get acquainted and head to the bar where we have bottles and a bunch of food. Two more girls they invited show up but they don't get into the bar because they are under 21. A crazy rule to imagine being enforced in a country like Colombia.

After the bar we go to a club called Dubai which reminded me of Montenegro clubs. All couches and tables and a tiny dance floor in the middle. Not my vibe but we did our thing there and called it a night at god knows what time.

Sunday rolls around I head to the mall with Nathan to get him the SIM card. We actually run into Dan, Daraab and their friend that just came into town that morning - Reza. They we're getting Reza a SIM card as well. We parted ways and Nate and I went around to explore new territory in Medellin.

Sunday night turned into another debauchery fest but in case I ever run for public office I can't divulge any information about it here.

Monday I woke up without an alarm somehow just in time for my first work meeting of the day and let's just say, I wasn't winning any Employee of the Day award that day.

A couple of things to note about Colombia so far:

Danger: My judgement of danger in a place comes purely from instinct because you really can't be sure that something will happen to you until it does. I instinctually take certain actions depending on my degree of comfortability in a place. What I do in Colombia different than other places is I never walk around with both headphones in, only one usually. And I avoid wearing my watch during the day (even though it's not valuable). I have only felt the need to remove my watch in the places I deemed most risky so take that how you will. However, I've only been here for 5 days and I am finding as the days goes by, I'm getting more and more comfortable which is the same feedback I've gotten from Dan and Daraab who have been here for two weeks.

Murder, drugs, prostitution: I haven't seen any gunfights or dead bodies in the streets nor is it something that even enters my mind as I am walking around. Drugs are easily obtainable as there are dealers on every street who walk around offering it to people, but it's not nearly as evident and bothersome as it is in Mexico. Just say no and they leave you alone. Prostitution is the big one here. Holy s***. Rows and rows of hookers everywhere. All day, everyday. Some will have the balls to reach out and grab you as you walk by them on the street. It really only becomes a problem if you're chatting to a girl for 20 min thinking it's going well and she hits you with a quote outta nowhere.

All of that jazz aside, there are a surprising amount of places to see in the vicinity of Medellin. Cable cars overlooking the city, Comuna 13 (stronghold of Medellin Cartel), Colombian coffee farms, cocoa plantations, and some nearby cities with incredible landscapes like Guatape. I plan on getting around to most of these in my time here so I will keep you guys posted.

PS: I'll have more pictures in the next one. I literally took only 3 videos of nights out since I've been here.

Till next week

-MS