Medellín, Colombia

Medellín was a bit of a surprise to me. Situated in the northwest of Colombia, the city earned the nickname “city of eternal spring” for the year-round nice weather it experiences. It had a violent past, but in recent years it has become a popular draw for both tourists and expats/digital nomads. I was excited to visit the city (even though I’m not much of a city person usually) because I had read so many blogs raving about how great Medellín was.

I took the bus from Bogota to Medellín, arriving in the evening in time to find a hostel. I had read that El Poblado was the place most tourists stay and where there are the most hostels. I found a decent and relatively cheap (for Medellín) hostel which was great and set out to find dinner. That’s when I first started to figure out the vibe of El Poblado. The three square blocks around my hostel were lined with various hostels and restaurants featuring solely western food. The prices were ridiculous – 25,000 to 40,000 COP per entrée. In comparison, a typical vegetarian menu del dia in a standard Colombian restaurant costs me 5,000 to 8,000 COP. I wandered the area for some time looking for another option, but it was getting late so I swallowed my pride and went to a French restaurant. The food turned out to be very good, just not something I would have chosen in Colombia normally. However, if you’re missing western food, you can find just about anything there, for a price of course.

The next day I decided to escape the busyness of the city and go for a hike. I had read about a hike you can take just outside the city accessible via the metro that had great views of the valley Medellín sits in. I’m a sucker for good hikes and overlooks so I decided to check it out. I took the A line metro up to the final stop then attempted to follow the directions I’d found online to the trailhead. The directions were not very specific, so I ended up walking around the town for an hour before finding the trail, but I did finally get there. Once I actually arrived, the path was hard to miss – straight up the mountain between two fences. I climbed up, up, and further up through the rocky terrain and was rewarded with some beautiful views of the city from above. I had read that the trail eventually gets to a shrine on the mountain and continues even to the peak of the mountain, but I decided to turn around as I’d mostly come for the overlook views.

One of the interesting things about the Medellín metro system is that it includes cable cars to the upper neighborhoods. Medellín is a sprawling city, taking up a lot more area than I expected. The main part of Medellín is in the valley, but neighborhoods are built up high into the surrounding hillsides. The metro system in Medellín was designed to accommodate this by including cable cars to these neighborhoods. For the price of a metro ticket, you can ride any of these. It seemed a fun way to get another overlook of the city, so I rode one up to its terminus and back down.

In the evening, I decided to check out the Parque Lleras area, which I had read was a good place to go out at night. However, it turned out to not be my scene at all. The streets surrounding the park were lined with big clubs and bars blaring music and with people trying to motion you into their establishment instead of one of the ones next door. A few blocks away from this madness I did find a small bar called Cerveceria Maestre which brewed their own beers on site. They were actually pretty good and a nice change from the usual tasteless beers I had found elsewhere.

The next day, I took an overnight trip to Guatape, but then returned to Medellín the next day. I wanted to try a different area, so I decided to stay in the city center. The vibe there could not be more different than El Poblado. It is packed with people, shops, fruit and vegetable vendors – in short everything you’d expect from a busy city center. It felt safe enough by day, but the owner of the hostel I was staying at warned me it was not safe to go out at night. I did in fact hear people shouting in the park outside my hostel until 2 a.m. so I think his advice was warranted. I still appreciated getting to see this part of Medellín that is so different from the tourist areas many people experience.

I don’t know that I would choose to spend a long time in Medellín but that just may be my usual dislike of cities. It was interesting to see though and to have the chance to experience a couple of different areas of the city.