Obesity and Innovation in Medellin

If you're watching Narcos like most people I know then you probably know more about Medellin than me. Besides old mate Pablo, Medellin is also well known for some chubby looking statues by a dude called Botero. He's a native of the city and supposedly Latin America's most well known and quoted artist (thanks Wikipedia). He's donated a lot of his work to the city and other museums in Colombia. 

Besides sculpture he also paints and a replica of one of his paintings is displayed in the San Antonio metro station. It's the Virgin Mary obviously after a few too many pies. 

The other thing that Medellin is now famous for is innovation apparently. In 2013 they won some award which says they were the most innovative city and they seem very proud of that. They're pouring a lot of money into cleaning up their city and improving the lives of the people here. Like a lot of mountainous Latin America they have cable cars up to the poorer areas in the surrounding mountains. 

This is the view on the way up and then from the top of one of the cable cars.

The other thing they've done here is install urban escalators in one of the communas built on a particularly steep hill. 

This used to be an extremely unsafe area and most likely mentioned in Narcos  if you're paying attention. It's called Comuna 13 but these days it's much safer and a lot of effort is being put into community programs, street art and infrastructure. 

These kids are part of La Semillitas (little seeds) which is a youth development program. They get a special shirt, food everyday and other benefits (like trips to the water park) in turn for being a kids neighbourhood watch program and basically developed into community role models. They joined us when we arrived in the Comuna which I thought was nice. I soon realised why they were so friendly...our tour guide bought them all mango icecreams!