Greetings from Istanbul, Turkey!
We are very behind on our newsletters… yet again. Instead of doing a quarter’s summary like last time, we’re setting a content schedule for ourselves to catch up. A lot has happened that we want to share with you all! So, for this edition let’s go back to March when we were in Colombia.
At everyone’s insistence about how great Medellin is and how terrible Bogota is, we spent most of our time in Medellin. Yet, we didn’t love Medellin. Perhaps it was the stark contrast between there and our time in CDMX that led to us not enjoying the city as much as we could have.
Compared to Mexico City, we felt less free. The space we lived in was smaller and had less light. The city’s more sprawled, places we’d regularly visit were farther away. It poured almost daily at random intervals and times of the day so it was harder to explore outside.
We also didn’t have friends around, which we’ve discovered is an important factor in our happiness. We did meet a few from Asian Wander Women – shout out to Jen who is writing a surrealist novel that has 8 pages placed on physical walls around the world. She spent the month looking for (and successfully found) a wall to write a page on in Medellin! It was so cool to witness the process in action – scouting out walls that’d be suitable and won’t get graffitied over, talking to countless store owners (in Spanish) to convince them to let her use their wall, renting professional scaffolding/painting equipment to bring her vision to life.
Though we wouldn’t live in Medellin again, we’d still recommend checking it out!
Colombia Travel Guide
The newsletters we most often link people are our New Zealand recommendations. We are going to start writing those again. Feel free to skip this section or revisit it later!
Medellin
Where to stay
Poblado - better food but more chaotic. Most tourists stay here.
Laureles - nicer, more local wealthy vibes but things are farther apart. We stayed here.
Getting around
Public transportation is best if you’re close to the stops. Otherwise go with Uber. The drivers will require you to sit in the front. Apparently otherwise taxis will know they’re an Uber and harass them.
Ubers often don’t want to pick up from Laureles because of the distance. Buffer 15 extra min, or if you can’t wait just take a taxi. But then you gotta haggle and pay with cash.
Activities
Paragliding: seeing the city from the sky is breathtaking! The different companies are the same price and take off from the same place so you don’t have to research too hard
Day trip to El Penon de Guatape: quite a trek to get to followed by a steep hike, but the views at the top are worth it!
Dance: Colombians love to dance! Check out a salsa club and/or take some lessons. DM if you want the teacher we went with, she was great.
Walk around Plaza Botero: Botero’s work is known for their exaggerated proportions. In the plaza, you’ll see many of his funny sculptures. Museum of Antioquia is right off the plaza and worth going to see the paintings also.
Take a tour - Medellin’s history is fascinating. More on this later. Ivy also enjoyed doing an exotic fruit tour with Real City Tours
Food
Drink soda saborizada - we couldn’t get enough of this stuff and it was available at most restaurants. Basically sparkling water with real fruit pulp. Not too sweet, not alcoholic, and very refreshing
Saludpan - healthy and tasty 3-course meal for ~$10! We came here often. There are others like it nearby if you want to change it up, but this was our favorite
Carmen - solid tasting menu. It’s sister restaurant Moshi was also great and right next door.
Since we didn’t love Medellin, we escaped to Salento and Cartagena for weekend trips.
Salento
Salento is known for the Valle de Cocora. This is the place that inspired Disney’s Encanto and is home to Colombia’s national tree, the Wax Palm. It can reach up to 200 ft (70m) in height. Until the giant sequoias of California were discovered, wax palms were believed to be the tallest trees on earth.
The government has been slow to buy up land to protect these trees but because of tourists, many landowners are turning their land into sanctuaries that charge for the views and snacks. So do visit!
How to get there: fly to Pereira, then take a taxi to Salento. To get to Valle de Cocora, there is a jeep collective shuttling people to and from Cocora Valley all day. It’s 8000 pesos round trip (~$2 USD). You can buy tickets at a booth and then wait in line to hop on a jeep that seats 10 in the vehicle and 3 hanging on the outside. The ride is 20 minutes.
Where to stay: Kawa Mountain Retreat was a serene getaway in the middle of nature. It’s just a 5 min walk to town even if it looks further away on the map, there is a back path.
Food: De Olier - a quaint chocolaterie. We came back twice for the desserts they were so good
Activity: The 5-hour hike at Valle de Cocora! The entrance for the hike is RIGHT where you get dropped off by the jeeps. If you wander more than 50m away, you’re in the wrong place. We read at least 10 different guides on the hike and none of them were clear enough about the trailhead. We ended up lost for 2 hours on a different trail.
Cartagena
A bumping coastal town where the Colombians vacation. It has beautiful Spanish architecture and lots of beach clubs. Make sure you pack some white because everyone here wears white to go out and party.
Go to a beach club on the islands, not one in Bocagrande. Bocagrande is the touristy strip and you’ll be hounded by vendors. Beach clubs have a day fee which includes the boat ride there from the Cartagena port. Just contact them via Whatsapp.
Walk around the beautiful old town with tons of cute shops
Food: Marea - decent food and a great view
Bogota
Finally, we ended up in Bogota, which we loved. Comparing the wealthy areas of Bogota and Medellin so that it’s not apples and oranges, Bogota had wider and cleaner streets, better food, fresher air, better weather (this one we might’ve just been luck), and less chaos. There is more green space and we actually felt SUPER SAFE walking around at night.
Where to stay
Parque de la 93 - this is where we stayed and we loved it. It felt super safe, walkable, and had great food options
Usaquen - just north of Parque 93, seems more young and hip
Food
Street food market from Netflix - if you go during the weekend or regular meal times, the lines are ridiculously long. Every stall has a different line and set of tables, it can be very confusing. Go and find the waiter for the place you want to eat at first to make sure you’re waiting in the right line! The rompe colchon from Esquia de Mary and ajiaco from Tolu were both worth writing home about
Osk Peru - tasty Peruvian food that satisfied our Asian taste buds
Leo - on the list of the World’s 50 Best. The dishes are made from indigenous ingredients, most we’d never heard of before
Medellin’s Urban Transformation
In the early 90s at the height of Pablo Escobar’s power, Medellin had 6000 homicides - a rate of 380 per 100,000 people. To put this in context, such a rate would be ~32,000 deaths by homicide per year in New York City (NYC has ~450).
It was one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the epicenter of the global cocaine trade, caused by a mostly American appetite for recreational drugs, weak and corruptible state institutions after the civil war, and drug gangs led by renowned criminal Pablo Escobar. To learn more, we highly recommend the Netflix documentary Business of Drugs.
We came to Medellin super curious about the tremendous transformation it has undergone in the decade after the death of Escobar and how it managed to transform itself into a modern innovation and tourism hub within one generation. Most locals avoid talking about this era and prefer to think about happier times. Here’s what we learned from some locals and taking tours with Palenque Tours and Real City Tours.
Metro de Medellín
Medellin is shaped like a Valley with the most established and affluent population inside the valley. Over the years as urbanization grew and people from the countryside and refugees moved in, they started building upwards onto the hills. It is generally understood that the higher up you are into the hills, the poorer the community was.
These migrants and refugees start building without government permission. Their homes are made of wood, tin, and plastic coverings. Complete informal “squatter” communities are built so big it becomes a small town where the only streets are tight corridors between homes randomly placed. These settlements start with no infrastructure, no waste disposal, transportation, building safety measures, water, or sewage. The government has to come in eventually to put those in.
Prior to the metro system, it would take over 2 hours for some of the poorest citizens of Medellin to go down to the valley. Now, with 2000 pesos (50 cents USD) and 30 minutes, they can access the job market, the hospital, new libraries, parks, and access to cultural and civic society. This provided accessibility and inclusion.
The people of Medellin are very proud of the metro system. In most major cities around the world, the metro systems have considerable graffiti vandalism and trash. But the Medellin metro is spotless and everyone riding it is orderly. This isn’t a coincidence. When the metro was first built, school children were taught “Cultura Metro” in schools, and even today, there are educational programs, art projects, and community engagement on the Metro.
This advanced transportation system is so famous that another AWW member we met in Medellin said it was in the urban economics teaching materials during her Ph.D. degree in Applied Economics at Wharton.
Democratic Architecture and Social Programs
The metro was key to economic benefits but also to symbolically dissolving the invisible borders between barrios (neighborhoods) to more secure, affluent parts of the city. Due to the drug trade, many invisible borders were drawn between gangs. Today, many of the public spaces like metro stops, community centers, libraries, parks, gyms, and free-wifi zones are places directly between two communities divided by invisible borders.
In these social spaces, there are programs on art therapy, dance, tech, and science - to help people express their sorrow and anger as well as workshops for kids to keep them off the streets and out of the drug trade that still exists, only more fractionalized and under the radar.
Comuna 13 is a great example. It was once the most dangerous neighborhood because of its strategic proximity next to the highway which brings you to the Uraba coast (a key drug trafficking route) meaning that those who control the highway decide what leaves and enters the city and those who controlled 13 controlled the route.
Today, there are outdoor escalators crisscrossing the hills. At each stop, there is a gallery, library, or community center. The roofs of the houses are brightly painted, old cans are flower pots, street-art cover every inch of wall space and hip hop groups perform at various corners.
We also saw this at various other poor neighborhoods where the community comes together to use art to overcome their violent history.
Colombia’s LATAM startup hubs
Creator Economy
When I asked what founders thought was the greatest opportunity in LATAM, many answered digital marketing and the creator economy.
We heard that of the world’s creators, 30% are in LATAM and 20% of that 30% are in Colombia. We saw tripods with selfie lighting provided at WeWork and gyms!
LATAM has the highest daily average media consumption per person at 14 hours and 40 minutes. Independent creators and influencers have become a major force in Latin America and LATAM countries rank at the top when it comes to making purchasing decisions based on influencer recommendations.
Yet, digital ad spending (which includes influencer marketing) is at a global low.
There is tremendous opportunity here in the LATAM market:
Help brands and companies move away from traditional advertising and into digital advertising
Build more tools for creators to monetize beyond sponsorships and help train them on how to monetize and build businesses - they have tremendous influence
As a brand or company, take advantage of the low CAC and low competition!
Angel and VC training for the new-generation coming from Old-Money
We all know that for a startup ecosystem to thrive, there needs to be VCs and investment dollars to support entrepreneurs.
In Colombia (and a lot of LATAM so we hear), most of the industries including banks, media, real estate, and infrastructure are owned by around a dozen families. They are extremely wealthy but conservative.
The startup incubators and venture firms in Colombia are running startup investing programs for the younger generation (30-somethings) who are going to take over the family business to help them get acquainted with high-risk early-stage investing in tech startups.
At various startup events, Ivy went to, every Colombian recognized the wealthy family clans by last name and knew exactly what the family was involved in.
That’s it for Colombia! 🙏 if you read it in its entirety, we know this was a particularly long one. On our next edition, we’ll be sharing about Ivy’s new job and our wedding. If it doesn’t come out in two weeks, help keep us accountable please.
Onwards,
Ivy and Owen
❤️ Loved this post <3