Travels thru Latin America: Medellín

I left Bogotá on an early bus for the 10 hour ride to Medellín in order to enjoy the spectacular scenery. But no sooner had we risen into the cordillera when we were enveloped in drizzle and mist, so the the bus swayed along the sharply winding road, whils we were entertained with the usual violent videos that passengers have to endure on Colombian buses, in arctic conditions. The bitter cold due to a fully functioning air conditioning unit cranked up full blast, despite numerous complaints from the passengers. Utterly bizarre when the temperature outside was a perfect 22 - 24 degrees, and a recipe for catching a cold. As we descended into the Rio Magdalena valley, we dropped out of the clouds and were rewarded with spectacular views. Sadly it is extremely difficult to photograph these from a lurching bus as apart from the motion, as the road twists, obstructions cull the opportunities of a good shot. Once I arrived in Medellín, the main hostel location appeared to be in an expensive residential neighbourhood with little local colour except about 1.5 km up the road, where the Zona Rosa is packed with night clubs and bars, and there is a parade of beautiful girls all somehow absorbed in their cellphones, whilst hoping to be noticed. The young guys in the hostel did very well with them. As for me, I was feeling exhausted and did not have the will to do much for some days. I think the news of Jacque's illness knocked me far harder than I had expected it to. I spent most of the time reading in Spanish, practised the guitar for a couple of hours a day and generally chatted with my "house mates". I couldn't even get excited about salsa dancing which is very unusual. However, I did manage to locate the Sephardic synagogue, which is some achievement as there is no address or contact phone number on the internet nor in the phone book for security reasons. Most Jews seemed to have migrated to this part of the world from the 1930s onwards, so the community is preponderantly askenaz, and the proprtion of sephardis in the sephardi community very small. The Friday night service was a curious hybrid of the 2, and the only real common factor that unites this with other sephardic shuls around the world (apart from sadly only one melody) was that the kids ran riot around the place, regardless of what was going on. It had a very warm and welcoming atmosphere, and there was one community member (Jozef), who reminded me of Gerald so much that I asked him if he was a Nurick.. He is even an engineer who has done impact research in the context of seismic effects on structures. I was invited by Jozef to his Friday night family dinner, at his mother's flat and I felt right at home with the fantastic food, the art on the walls, I could have been at Clairette's in Seapoint. Jozef told me that there was a huge community of converso Jews in Medellín, (some 250 families if I remember correctly) who discovered there "roots and origins" when Israeli contractors were employed to impose/improve security during the era of severe gang violence a couple of decades ago. They inspired so much respect amongst the gangs that many wanted to be Jewish and a number went to Israel to convert. After this initial wave, rabbis were brought out from Israel to do the conversions locally, and this community is very devout, refusing to drive on shabbat etc. I met one family and they were really great people, who really felt a sephardic heritage and that becoming Jewish was a kind of homecoming, even though there was no real evidence of forced conversion in the family history.

I visited Fernando, with whom I had done the Ciudad Perdida walk and spent the afternoon having lunch with his extended family. Afterwards, we went to Tetro Prado to see a 2 handed comedy in the form of "Pais Paisa" a 2 handed comedy series parodying a typical Medellín couple. As there were a lot of in jokes I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, as I reckoned that I understood about 30% of it, but maybe a lot less in parts. A lot of the fun was being part of the audience and being carried along in the swell of their enthusiasm.


The cable way to Santa Domingo, part of the metro system of Medellín

The separate cableway to Santa Elena to Santa Domingo. As this is undeveloped forest within a national park it is like a tree canopy tour, fun to ride around without getting off at the top. Very few people seem to use it... Maybe it's different at the weekend

View of Medellín at sunset from just below the cable station at Santa Domingo. It's a huge city with gridlocked traffic, the river running through the bottom of the valley is clearly visible.