Buy a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; show him a rock and he can spend a lifetime… doing stuff with it.

Because that’s what you do with rocks the world over. You look at them, you film them, you watch them at sunrise, check them out at sunset, admire them at noon and, in the case of this one at El Penon, you can even climb it!!! Because someone built some stairs on the side. 760 of them. Not that I was counting. I didn’t have to, they number the significant ones (‘125’) to encourage you (‘575’) or to depress you (‘600’). They don’t let you climb Ayers Rock in Australia but that’s because it is very historically important to the Aborigines. The El Penon rock has no such stigma attached. But being at well over 2000 metres above sea level, its not really the same easy climb that 760 steps would be at Southend. And when you get to the very top, you just fight your way through 263 market stalls selling beer, sweets, t-shirts and hats. Not ‘kiss-me-quick’ hats, like you’d get in Southend, probably ‘shoot-me-quick’ ones, being in Columbia. If I could read Spanish, I’d know.

We ‘did’ the rock and we went to a nearby town called Guatape. A very hard place to pronounce. Hence the ‘rock and the hard place’ tour from Medellin. Not convinced its worth the entry fee, if I’m honest, lorra miles covered for not too much gain. Though Guatape, a ‘one-fish-town’ if ever there was, does inevitably have a Bolivar Square. Phew.

Loving Columbia though. Lovely people, friendly, wonderful. But oddly they get a bad press. In fact for decades they lived through some of the worst violence known anywhere on the planet, with Columbians finding novel and horrendous ways of killing each other for any manner of reasons.

The country is rich in gold, emeralds, silver and platinum. The plains, due to volcanic events, are amazingly fertile, so coupled with a wonderful, moderate tropical climate, absolutely anything will grow here with ease and abundance. Coffee, avocados, bananas, all manner of fruits, potatoes, cows can graze everywhere because it all so wonderfully green. And to compensate, the social history of the country is plagued with terrible political corruption, instability and murder. Which goes back really to just after the last war, about 1948 or so. Communist guerrillas from Venezuela, paramilitary gangs from Columbia, civil wars; when the drug shit happened it was almost a form of stability. Though the murders escalated massively in the Escobar years.

So now, ole Pablo is remembered in contradictory ways. Medellin was ‘his town’, where he was born, where his family still live, where he always ruled. Where there is the only metro system in the country. Where he built housing for thousands of poor Columbians. And they remember him by selling t-shirts with his image. No beauty, ‘the perfect face for radio’. But as with Al Capone, with the Krays, the world likes to remember gangsters fondly. Even ones almost totally irredeemably evil, like Pablo Escobar.

Wonderful City is Medellin. Tomorrow we head off to Cartagena in the north.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx