Medellín - Comuna 13 and Aurora

After an all-night bus ride from Bogota, I finally arrived in Medellin at seven in the morning 😃 I slept quite well, the seats recline to 160° so I was half-lying. I just had to turn from the half-lying left to the half-lying right and vice versa, because I got a bit numb in the half-lying one 😂

I got to the hotel easily by metro, and I'm staying in the Estadio district, where most tourists stay. I'm glad that it finally got warm. Over twenty degrees Celsius 🤩 Medellin is on a much lower altitude than Bogota and that's why.

So I left the hotel and took the metro to the San Javier district, from where the cable car goes to the Aurora district. There are four stations in total, but no one got off at the intermediate ones. And to get on at the lower station, I waited 20 minutes, that's how long the line was. By the way, this cable car is a part of the local public transport, it's not a tourist attraction. At the last station in Aurora, I looked at the city views from above and I went down with the cable car again.

Then I walked to the escalator that goes up to the Comuna 13 district, the most popular place in Medellin. In fact, the entire San Javier district is called Comuna 13, but usually tourists call it only the upper part. The last 200 meters to the stairs, I walked in a dense crowd, moving at a dizzying speed of ten meters per minute 😂 No chance to overtake.

The stairs had several stages, some of them did not work causing a jam. It's a very traumatic experience when you go up the stairs, and there is an almost stationary crowd in front of you, and you have no way to get off the stairs 😬 And people are pressing behind you. I experienced this twice today.

I walked through the streets of Comuna 13. There were so many people that in some places the walking speed dropped to two meters per minute. It was also very loud, each stall had its own large speakers, and competed with the others in volume 😂 It was an absolute cacophony, as loud as a rock concert. I think I shouldn't have gone there on a Sunday afternoon 😃 But it was still a nice and eventful day.Read more