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  • Day 14

    Medellin

    April 13, 2017 in Colombia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    Doug taking a turn at this blog thing!
    Next stop Medellin, the place for coffee and cocaine...I was asked numerous times before coming to Colombia, why on earth are you going to Colombia of all places, I thought the answer was fairly self explanatory? (See above)
    Getting there involved another night bus, oh joy! Three hours after setting off Vin Diesel, or the Spanish guy pretending him to be him finally shut up!! But Susie snoring like a train didn't....So into an uneasy sleep.
    Next day we went on a Pablo Escobar tour, to be honest, I don't think Susie had any idea who this was, I though was extremely keen.

    The man who picked us up offered us a Coca Cola now and a gram of cocaine for later, we think he was joking, but on the other hand maybe not as it turns out he was one of Pablo Escobar's two drivers (the other one being on duty with Escobar when he died, so was also dead). This made Susie uneasy, a sense which was heightened a lot when the man shouted "NO PHOTO" in a Chinese mans face when he held his camera up to take a photo of the driver, apparently this was because he had never gone to prison and didn't want to go. I felt sorry for the Chinese man it just comes naturally to them! We also met Roberto Escobar, Pablo's brother, he was the "accountant" and spent 16 years in prison and got out early as he was a changed man, that and apparently $1 billion dollars changed hands. He also lived in a huge mansion so clearly still plenty of money kicking around.

    We then went to Parque Arví (a nature reserve and archeological site) but unfortunately we couldn't get in. Now maybe our Spanish still needs improvement but I think we were told it was at capacity. Or maybe it was because we looked dodgy as we got stopped my police 2 minutes later requesting out passports. So being told by numerous people that we should have our passports on us at all
    Times with the visa stamp we course were very organised....and did not have them on us. A argument broke out, the police in Spanish and us in English, needless to say we got nowhere. Eventually they accepted looking at a photo of our passports, which they then also took pictures of!!??? No idea why. We thought this was odd behaviour it did cross our minds that these weren't police at all!! So basically if this is the last post from us for 4 days or more, we have been abducted so please come help..............

    Lastly we went to Plaza Botero, a park with statues full of work from artist Fernando Botero, who specialised in naked statues of excessively fat people and animals! Naturally I felt right at home and joined in. Apparently statues are fine, real life not so much.
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