Shavin: Four days in Medellín, Colombia

Last week, I headed off with my husband to Medellín, a city of roughly 5 million people in the lush heart of Colombia in South America. I’d like to say it was a trip we’d been planning for a long time, because that’s what reasonable people do when they go to far-away places. I’d also like to say that we stayed a good long time, because that’s also what reasonable people do, particularly when travel to and from their destination eats up most of a day on either end. But in fact we only made a firm commitment to go to Medellín two weeks in advance of going, and our time away, I’m slightly embarrassed to say, was a mere five days.

The problem is I can’t go away for any longer without becoming desperately homesick, and I can’t make a travel plan over a few weeks ahead of time because I immediately start to dread the trip, and, as the hours till go-time tick down, I busy myself collecting a suitcase full of reasons why I can’t or should not go. These reasons often, but not always, involve a dog.

For example, there was the time we went to Tampa soon after putting the last of our three dogs — The Cocker Coalition, I called them — to sleep, and I was so deep in grief I wanted to stay home and walk among the canine ghosts. Several months later we went to Barcelona and on to Rome. Then and still, I felt the absence of The Coalition so keenly I could not concentrate, and I returned home without a working knowledge of where I had been. Twice I canceled trips when Theo became ill, and once, weather grounded my plane before take-off, and I joyfully returned home.

I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could be more like Susan Sontag, who famously said, “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list,” or like British travel writer Freya Stark, who said, “To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” What? I’m sorry, just no.

But every now and then, I get talked into a trip by my persistent husband, a man who, when he’s not playing golf or making art, identifies as Susan Sontag. Such was the case with Medellín.

Medellín sits in the lap of the stunning, verdant Andes Mountains. Visually, it is nothing short of spectacular. The city fills the bowl of the Aburrá Valley and sloshes up the sloping hillsides in every direction — millions of structures made of plaster or stucco or brick, whitewashed to deflect the heat of the year-round bright sunlight. At dusk, the lights come on, winking and flickering like shimmering sequins. Orange and green and yellow parrots and petite parakeets — birds I’ve never seen outside of sad wire cages — merrily swoop and dive through the darkening skies.

In the Comuna 13 neighborhood, which every visitor to Medellín is instructed to visit, murals, street dancing and thousands of souvenir and food vendors have replaced what was, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, one of the most dangerous areas in Medellín, owing to gangs and drugs. Now a lively, noisy barrio above the San Javier district, it has been reclaimed: Loud Colombian dance music spills from loudspeakers, vendors hawk T-shirts and miniature Botero statuettes and gooseberries and empanadas, and motorcycles and cars wind their way through the dense crowds. About halfway up the neighborhood, you can board the long series of outdoor escalators that clamber up the hillside, offering riders unrestricted views (and countless photo ops) of the valley below.

Unfortunately, where there is beauty, there is also abject poverty, and this we saw riding the Metrocable, cable cars that carry tourists and commuters high over the city and the forest canopy, depositing them in the various neighborhoods and at Parque Arví, the enormous nature preserve and aptly named “cloud forest,” roughly 2500 feet above Medellín.

Look down from the cars, and you see not just the sweep of mountains and meadowlands as far as the eye can see, but also thousands upon thousands of ramshackle houses layered one upon the other, built out of whatever was available at the moment of construction: corrugated tin, bricks, stucco, sheets of plywood. Many have no doors, or have curtains for doors; many have gaping holes in their roof or are missing a roof altogether. And many have crumbled or been flattened by weather or time, lying where they fell like dispossessed bones.

Elsewhere in Medellín, at Plaza Botero, 23 Fernando Botero bronze sculptures — men and women, horses, heads, hands all in his trademark rounded, out-of-perspective style — are on display. And just off the square, inside the Museo de Antioquia, is the world’s largest collection of Botero’s paintings and additional sculptures. Ducking into the museum after a day of sensory assault felt like taking refuge in a heavenly sanctuary made entirely of stunning art and trustworthy bathrooms.

If you, like me, harbor the lifelong competing urges to both hide and be seen, the crowded, boisterous neighborhoods, bars and restaurants of Medellín offer a mix of both. But if you, like me, prefer to stay home, don’t. The ghosts of whatever you can’t bear to leave will still be there when you get back, I promise. More importantly, the presence of what’s real out in the world just might haunt you in a good way.

Dana Shavin is an award-winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the author of a memoir, “The Body Tourist,” and “Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs,” a collection of her most popular columns spanning 20 years. More at Danashavin.com. Email her at danaliseshavin@gmail.com.