Just as soon as I thought I could let my guard down for a bit and get appropriately lost for a little while, once again I found myself knee deep in shady characters on definitely the wrong side of the street.
The Medellin barrio Laureles that I'd docked at a cool hostel called Urban Buddha, is in a fairly nice part of the city. "Tranquilo" as they say and has an upscale vibe. After hitting the tourist "must sees" like the Cable Metro and the miniature Antioquian village replica at the top of one of the surrounding mountains, I hit the Botero plaza and thought I was ready to get lost again.
The edges of the plaza were pretty crusty with characters, but I'd told myself it was just because it was below a giant church, always a great place to panhandle. The light was getting very buttery and I figured I had a couple hours to find my way across town via metro eye line reference in the distance well before nightfall. That all looked good on the spreadsheet at least. ;)
I don't know why I've got it somehow stuck in my head the notion that Sundays are safer than other days. What this spreadsheet was missing was the fact that many shops in Latin America are closed on Sundays. That means no pedestrian shoppers or police protecting them. That means that it's just me, an obvious foreigner bopping along carefree with his little camera getting more and more lost as dusk threatened to morph I into twilight.
Another factor left from the spreadsheet was that buildings block metro lines and my point of reference quickly disappeared. As i tried to find reference, one chap followed me a good while until he finally approached suggesting I follow him toward the old church for good photos while another chap tried to distract me with questions trying to figure out which country I'm from.
I did my best to try and look intimidating, but that's a tough sell in shorts and sandals while sporting a daypack and camera.
The camera was quickly tucked away and I tried to look confident and not quite as lost. I was still getting approached and "cased" so I thought maybe I'd just start talking out loud to myself and darting my eyes around as if I may be borderline if not full-on insane. The idea being that even though on the surface I looked like an easy tourist target, perhaps if I looked more than a little off it might be enough of an unpredictable element to at least cause a would-be attacker to at least pause and reconsider possibly finding another sure thing victim rather than to risk this foreigner might actually be a nut job.
It may have worked because no one even made eye contact with me after that. As soon as I found my way back to areas with a occasional police, good street lights and witnesses, I backed off the little charade and easily slipped my way back into the safety of the barrio Laureles. Perhaps it was flawed logic, but it at least gave me the confidence to forge ahead through the war zone. ;)
There are many lovely areas in Medellin and most of the people couldn't be more friendly and helpful. But wander a few streets in the wrong direction and you'll quickly discover its a whole different soccer match altogether.
The groovy Urban Buddha has been great as a peaceful refuge, but it's now been taken over by Salsa-seeking backpackers on the prowl for a party no matter what the potential cost and or loss. I suspect as I wander my way up toward the Cartegena area in the North, this rowdy scenario is going to repeat itself, but I absolutely have to see if Cartegena's reported beauty matches the hype.
Moving on toward Guatape next. It's about and hour or two from Medellin and another place off my radar that I've heard about from the grape vine. I don't know anything about it other than its supposed to be beautiful and former cocaine kingpin Pablo Escabar used to have a villa there. We'll find out soon enough. Wish me suerte!