I don’t even know how I’m going to write this. No words can do justice to what was quite possibly my most enjoyable time of this entire Latin American journey. It’s such a highlight that it has almost all become a blur, a bright, colourful, high-in-the-sky blur, with flashes of scenes emerging from the mist of nostalgic contentment. But I made notes so here's an attempt to assemble those into somewhat meaningful sentences...
What made it so great - In a short word-vomit summary - were the people, the city, the climate, the classes, the landscape, the school, the salsa bars, 3-weeks-of-staying-in-a-home-and-not-needing-to-pack, the magnificent stories of the city, the food, the affordability, the festivities…
I was lying in a hammock in Palomino one day in mid-July, recovering from the long arduous journey to La Guajira and back and I realised I was not at all satisfied with my limited Spanish knowledge and was thirsty for more. I also realised - shockingly - I was getting tired of travelling. But I was also really looking forward to visiting the legendary city of Medellin - the city made famous in the Netflix series Narcos, but the overwhelmingly positive impressions I got from fellow travellers and blogs. So I came up with the idea of marrying rest, learning and exploring, and decided sign up for Spanish school there. I brought my laptop back to said hammock and started researching schools in Medellín that I could start attending in 2 weeks' time. Googled ‘Spanish school in Medellin’, opened a few tabs on my browser of different schools, read one, when a friend Nicola messaged me to go hang out at her hostel, where I met Steffie, who had just done 4 weeks in Colombia Immersion (CI) in Medellín and who then managed to persuade me in the space of 2 minutes to sign up. 2 weeks later, I was sat in a CI classroom ready to devour more Spanish.
The lifestyle I had for those wonderful 4.5 weeks was exactly what I needed.
School, lunches, and home: the joys of routine, familiarity, productivity and community
Every morning for 4 weeks, Monday to Friday, 9am-1pm I had Spanish class. Then my classmates and I would go for lunch at Plaza America for simple but delicious meals. 10,000 COP would get you a hearty soup, a main (a healthy balance of meat/fish, rice & salad) and a juice. They also had homemade cakes. And so at about 1:10pm every day the entire L-shaped counter would just be lined with all of us from the Spanish school, discussing the differences between ‘por’ and ‘para’ or when to use the preterit tense or the indefinite tense.
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| More than sightseeing |
And on Fridays, we would make our way to the school’s Envigado branch for the weekly language exchange, sometimes stopping at the Venezuelan arepa place for some mouth-watering arepas, and then squeeze ourselves into the crowded balcony, sipping Club Colombias (beers) and picking on popcorn. Open to anyone who wanted to learn English or Spanish, there were locals who wanted to improve their English came to mingle with Spanish-learners. Afterwards, there’d always be a group wanting to continue the party at a salsa bar, which we’d inevitably be part of, and the Club Colombia flow would continue.
After 2 months of being on the road and of meeting new people and being in a new place and unpacking and packing every few days, this "new" life with structure and routine was surprisingly refreshing and comforting. I was waking up every morning with a clear purpose, and for most of the day I had a schedule that was already set, and I didn’t have to do any planning or thinking about what I’d spend my time doing.
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| Visiting the Metropolitan Greenbelt on a school field trip |
I also enjoyed LEARNING so much
I was putting my brain to good use, stuffing it with new knowledge, reviving it with critical discussions in class, and challenging it with on-the-spot quick-fire quizzes, and keeping it fresh with homework every day. I felt productive in a way that was more fulfilling than just doing a lot of sightseeing or going to visit a lot of places.
Did you know that Spanish had individual VERBS for eating breakfast (desayunar), eating lunch (almorzar), and eating dinner (cenar)?
We had great teachers who made learning the language fun, interesting and relevant. We were always asked WHY questions, to talk about our experiences, our opinions…which also helped us get to know our fellow classmates very well. There was also comfort in becoming familiar with my surroundings - the quickest way to the school and to the metro, where to do my grocery shopping, where to get my morning croissant and afternoon coffee. I love the feeling of being more than just a tourist - of seeing and exploring a place on a different dimension, as if I were living there, through doing mundane things like going to a hair salon or topping up phone credit. More than just a language school
Colombia Immersion organised extra activities to really allow students to IMMERSE - weekly language exchanges, tours of the neighbourhood around the school for new students, salsa nights, scavenger hunts, coffee-tasting, empanada-making demos, and the most interesting of all, its amazing field trips. I went to 3 of their rotation of 5 field trips.
These field trips, thankfully none of which are in Poblado or is an Escobar tour - took us to areas which tourists would never set foot in by themselves. They were usually on the edge of town, in areas where the marginalised (socially and physically) lived, but were concrete examples of how Medellín - the city that had long been renowned as a centre of narcotics-related crime, poverty and despair - through its incredibly innovative efforts of transformation, had rocketed to become a city with some of the lowest rates of poverty and crime, and highest rates of education and health care access in South America. Our Medellín expert and guide Pablo, who founded Real City Tours and now collaborates with the school (CI) to provide exclusive weekly tours to CI students, was knowledgeable, funny, engaging and passionate to share about how much change his city has been going through, taking us on roller-coaster buses to barrios revamped over old water pumps, on rubbish-mountain-turned-green-neighbourhood, on cable cars dangling over playgrounds and clotheslines. I’m writing this 3 months late and I still remember Pablo emphasising the 3 major pillars of Medellin’s transformation - transportation, education and sports. And through innovation, co-operation, hard work and continuation of policies and projects even though the city had a new mayor every 4 years.
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| Pan de Azucar at the Greenbelt |
In these low-income residential areas up on the hillsides, we saw well-maintained computer rooms for young people to use to do homework and apply for jobs, community centres where they have things like craft classes for retired people, public playgrounds for kids to play and space for local residents to interact and have conversations. We helped teenagers untangle their kites that got caught in lamp posts, and gawked at how cute little 4-year-olds were playing football at the community football pitch.
During my course, we visited
1. one tiny part of the Metropolitan Greenbelt - an enormous urban park lining the upper reaches of the hillsides surrounding the city.
2. La Sierra - once (not even that long ago) considered to be one of the most violent areas in the city, where "invisible borders" between neighbourhoods existed and crossing them meant risking your life big time.
3. Manrique - to learn about the rapid development of these neighborhoods, and the modification of the water tanks into community centers, and how it has affected the perspectives of the locals.
Medellin’s transport system blew my expectations away for a city in South America - it was so extensive and modern. Metro and tram lines covering major parts of the city, cable cars branching out into multiple sides of the valley, with a cheap and uniform fare regardless of how long or short your journey is, and frequent buses to connect to areas where there were no cable cars or metro.
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| Manrique |
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| Comuna 13 |
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| View from a cable car |
One cannot talk about transformation without talking about Comuna 13 - once considered the most dangerous place in Medellin, in Colombia, in the world. Comuna 13 is not the place to gawk at the city’s past, but one has to understand how bad things were to appreciate how far it has come. A detailed account if how it earned this reputation can be found here https://medellindaytrips.com/comuna-13-in-medellin-history-and-present/, but basically it involved drug gangs exploiting the vulnerable poorly-educated settlers displaced from the countryside, and then paramilitaries, FARC and ELN (National Liberation Army) fighting for control of the area, dissident and drug gangs controlling illegal activities, police raids…but from 2006, the mayor decided to invest huge amounts of money and effort to clean up and transform the area, by building a cable car line, and a series of outdoor escalators allowing residents in these neighbourhoods quick access the city for work, healthcare and education. ART was also a big part of the transformation - artists were encouraged to graffiti the heck out of the place, and now swarms of tourists flock to the area everyday to check out the street art, street performances, munch on street food like chuzos and micheladas from a plethora of food vendors, and hear about the tremendous revamp of what was considered one of the darkest corners of the world from one of many free walking tours offered on-site, most of them local residents.
And indeed, the PEOPLE are the most valuable asset in this place. They are incredibly warm, welcoming, cheerful and happy. Who wouldn’t be - instead of fearing getting gunned down by drug lords or rival gangs every day, now they’re getting good dosh from tourists buying t-shirts, trinkets, empanadas and ice lollies. But their smiles are REALLY from being proud of what they’ve been through, what they’ve learned and how far they’ve come.
The landscape, inside and outside of Medellín
I wasted no weekend (and sometimes weekdays) to explore extensive parts of the city. Medellín is located in a valley at just under 1500m a.s.l., and thus is surrounded by hills, with houses and buildings perched all around the surrounding slopes. I’d say with a few exceptions of a couple of affluent areas, most of these hillsides (esp higher up) are low-income neighbourhoods. We visited a couple of these neighbourhoods during our field trips, where the higher you go, the poorer the living conditions.
Being surrounded by hills, it also means there were plenty of spots for day hikes. One of which was Cerro De Las Tres Cruces, easily accessible from the city centre. At the top of this hill after a gruelingly steep but quick 45-minute climb, there was a snack stall, a juice stall, and - most interestingly - an outdoor public “gym”, and very fit men (and a few women) pumping iron or doing pull-ups or whatnot (and did I mention they’re often shirtless, and dripping with sweat?), especially on weekends. I ended up visiting this place twice in 4 weeks - for the uh…exercise, of course.
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| Cerro de Las Tres Cruces - views for days |
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