One Man’s Freedom Fighter

Monday 10 May
Medellín

I decided I wanted to see some other parts of Medellín apart from the little bit of suburbia where the hostel was, and the Zona Rosa which had the bars. So I headed in to the centre of town.

It was pretty boring, all big concrete buildings of no interest. I was getting hungry so I started looking for food but all I could see were crappy little almuerzo places and hundreds upon hundreds of fried chicken places. It must be like crack for the locals. My sensitive aesthete nature meant I couldn’t bring myself to eat in either of those places. So I kept searching.

Eventually I found a food hall in a small but smart shopping centre and had an almuerzo there. Of course I had no idea what I was actually ordering but it turned out to be fine, and everything seemed to be covered in orange juice or something equivalent. Even the salad dressing. Not the worst thing in the world.

Afterwards I decided to go and see the grave of Medellín’s most famous son – peasant, drug lord, murderer and church builder Pablo Escobar. I went to the tube station and took a taxi. Even though he didn’t speak any English he guessed what I wanted to see and pointed out the grave for me in the cemetery. Which was lucky as I had no idea where it was.

Once there I had to ask the gardener to take a picture for me. The ones I was taking myself weren’t coming out well at all. He even went to wash his hands to take the photo, which was kind of him.

In the taxi on the way back, the driver tried to engage me in conversation. There’s only so many times you can say, “no entiendo. Hablo solo un pocito Español.” Maybe he was telling me that in his life, Pablo Escobar was senator for the Medellín region, one of the top ten richest people in the world, his philosophy of “sliver or lead” – bribery or death, how he was the champion of the people by building schools, churches and hospitals, or how he was responsible for 90% of the cocaine going into America at one time. Maybe not.

Then I ate some pizza.