Settling into Medellin, Colombia
A friendly city cow a few blocks from our place in Sabaneta.
We have a lot of experience now in knowing that the nomad life means flexibility and the unexpected. At least, since Covid started shutting things down all over the world last March.
We arrived safely here in Medellín last week. We debated coming at all with a third Covid wave hitting Medellín. Our Airbnb host had allowed us to reschedule our original plans to be here last December even though he wasn’t not required to do so. We asked him about the situation here and he assured us that, although mask wearing was the norm, things were otherwise reasonably open, despite the surge in cases. After getting vaccinated, much discussion, and weighing the pros and cons, we decided to go for it.
To think, in all of our discussions, our hemming and hawing, our weighing all options, the idea that Covid would be the lesser concern over protests/rioting/looting from political unrest didn’t even cross our minds. I mean, it's not like we were planning a trip to somewhere like Washington, DC, Portland, or Minneapolis, right?
So we arrived last week the day after many Colombian citizens called for a protest against tax reform. The protests in Medellín were fairly peaceful to start—especially in comparison to Bogata and Cali. As the week went on, instances of looting and rioting came up and a shift to protests against police brutality started. The mayor put a complete lockdown in place last weekend closing all businesses, including grocery stores, due to the protests. This was on top of our Covid restrictions that only allow us to go grocery shopping on certain days based on the last digit of our ID.
We really thought our biggest issue would be potential Covid lockdowns. Oh, how much we have to learn about being nomads! 😂
There are continued protests, riots, and looting here in Medellin. The majority of protests and all the rioting is in El Centro and the northern sections of the city. Fortunately, we are in a neighborhood pretty far from there.
Where we are.
What does that mean for nomad adventures? We are sticking to our nice little section of the city, Sabaneta, for now. We have been walking the streets and exploring our end of town until things hopefully start calming down. We have lots of interesting neighborhood streets to explore and big hills to climb. The weather has been great temperature-wise, but very overcast with afternoon rain showers. I’m hoping as we get towards the end of May, we will see a bit more sun. Jim gets pretty grumpy when it’s cloudy—OK, maybe I do too. Maybe.
Even though we haven't been able to get out quite as much as we would like, there is entertainment to see right from our balcony. From street performers, to just people watching, to being entertained by the husky dog hanging out on the rooftop across the street, we are enjoying what we can!