La Feria de las Flores

[indiekid]

La Feria de las Flores

By indiekid

It was dark by the time my bus arrived in Medellín. My first impression was of lights twinkling on either side of the road, lights which reached higher and higher up the hillsides as we approached our destination. We were soon driving through what felt like an upturned bowl of stars, the mountain peaks out of sight. Little did I know that, beyond those mountains, hundreds of boxes of flowers were being packed and distributed. I did know, however, that the Feria de las Flores (Festival of the Flowers), Colombia's largest festival, was just a few days away. It was hard to miss it: every television in every city was inviting people to Medellín with a series of catchy adverts. The city's reputation, however, once centred on something very different: for two decades it was the seat of that most absolute of monarchs, Pablo Escobar.

I'm going to start with an apology: considering this is an article about a flower festival it's not particularly visual. For security I mostly kept my camera locked away, and the festival was a bit crowded for good photography anyway. I've discussed this with my editor, Jubal, and we've agreed to put the following video in as an introduction, and there's another one to watch at the end.

After a hot and cockroach-ey night at a bus station hotel I made my way south to the suburb of El Poblado. The mid-morning sun was warm and the streets a quiet, leafy green. The traffic noise was swiftly replaced by birdsong, including that of two squabbling parrots. An avocado salesman rumbled his cart from door to door and cried "Aguacate!" at intervals. I buzzed my way into my hostel and was met by the receptionist Claudia, who invited me to add my rucksack to the growing heap behind the desk. Claudia would become a fixture of my mornings in Medellín, keeping the backpackers in check accompanied by her little son and big dog. My bed was not yet ready so I joined some other backpackers for a cup of tea. I, at least, was drinking tea; they were mostly on lager, as they had been since the previous evening.

My first priority was food, so I asked Claudia where I could buy some groceries. She recommended a supermarket up the road, but I returned empty-handed. It was the trendiest and most modern supermarket I had seen for a long time; it even had self-service checkouts. To me it was just gringo products at gringo prices, so I asked Claudia where I'd find a "real" market. Surprised, she took the map she had given me earlier and added in a little circle on the very edge of the tourist area: Minorista Market. It was an easy bus ride away and I enjoyed trawling the dozens of stalls with the locals (Medellín is much more diverse than its rival, the capital Bogotá). Colombia is home to a huge variety of fruit; earlier in my trip I had encountered a fruit bowl as part of a tour and found myself unable to name any of the contents. It got me thinking that, when it comes to tropical fruit, we in the UK are limited to what can be easily refrigerated and transported. In the Minorista Market I was able to buy a variety of beautifully fresh produce. I also picked up some arepas, a kind of maize flatbread, but had to ask Claudia's help in cooking them.

It was time to start exploring. Medellín (population 2.5 million) is a long, thin city built along a river of the same name. It has a modern (but sometimes crowded) metro system which also hugs the river for much of its length. I rode it north to the Plaza Botero, home to the Rafael Uribe Uribe Palace of Culture. This imposing black and white cathedral-like building was designed by the Belgian architect Agustín Goovaerts in the 1920s, but not completed until 1982. The building's dome is off-centre as though it was intended to be twice as long; the story goes that the architect fell out with the local government during construction. Also in the plaza are sculptures by Colombia's most revered artist, Fernando Botero. Botero is widely known for making things "fat", and this is initially apparent in the human and animal figures on display in the plaza. I was told, however, that the exaggeration of certain body parts was actually Botero's ploy to draw attention to each sculpture's true focus: the bits he left in normal proportions. I'm not sure if, in image-conscious Colombia, this would have been much comfort to the models who sat for him. Its effectiveness, however, was evidenced in some of the paintings in the adjoining Museo de Antioquia. A painting of Christ, for example, shows him wearing the crown of thorns and bleeding where it has cut him. Thanks to the size of the head in comparison to the face, the blood seems to go on and on forever. It's as if Botero has given every human sin its own drop. His most famous painting, however, is of the 1993 killing of Pablo Escobar in Medellín, and you can see it by following the link below. For what it's worth, I was not personally taken with Botero and preferred the more varied and subtle style of his contemporary, Luis Alberto Acuna.

Botero's "La muerte de Pablo Escobar".

On the far side of the city centre the metro links up with a cable car network, which climbs the steep slopes on either side of the valley. It boasts some impressive murals at its stations. My journey up towards the Arví Park took me above zig-zagging streets of square brick houses. This, I realised, was what a regenerated favela, or shanty town, looks like. After ascending about 800 meters the route abruptly levelled off. All around was a beautiful and varied Andean forest. The cable car dipped and rose approximately level with the treetops; the overall sensation was one of flying (enhanced by the fact that I was the only passenger by this point). My ride ended at a very smart visitor centre, but I felt I was a bit pushed for time to actually venture into the park.

I was lucky to have a guide to Medellín in the form of John, a digital nomad from the USA. John, like many others, had made the city a semi-permanent home and knew all the good hostels and shared workspace facilities. For his work the city was perfect: modern, well outfitted with WiFi, cheap, diverse, interesting and with great weather (its nickname is the "City of Eternal Spring"). John knew when the rowdy football games were on and where the underground salsa bars were hidden. His speciality, however, was taking groups from the hostel to Carrera 70, the main party street of the city and the festival. It was lined with bars which spilled out in a mess of balloons and silletas, wooden frames holding great round signs made entirely of flowers (we'll return to them later). A stage was set up at the end of the street showcasing everything from punk music to Argentine tango.

I had promised myself a bit of a break from intensive backpacking while in Medellín. My two week stay was unstructured and I barely wrote in my diary. I chilled out, went to the concert hall and took part in a chain writing project here on Exilian. Most of my time, however, was spent at the Table. I have capitalised it here as it was a uniquely accommodating social space - for those who were confident with spoken English, at least (I was, once again, one of the weaker Spanish speakers). The atmosphere of the hostel was neatly summed up by a German friend of mine:

"Oh yes," he said, "As soon as I saw this was a 'party hostel' I knew there would be a lot of British people here."

I buried my head in my hands and hoped that the conversation would not turn to Brexit. We returned, instead, to one of our favourite topics: which of the Colombian lagers was most like urine (after a few days at the Table they all tasted equally bad). Another favourite topic was cocaine, which in Medellín flows in rivers. It was common, in the mornings, to see hung-over backpackers attempting to sell on their left-overs to avoid them "going to waste" ahead of an upcoming flight (Claudia took a dim view of this).

One night we all left the Table together and piled into taxis. We got held up at a roadblock where some police officers half-heartedly checked our passports (they did not discover that several of us had, sensibly, left them locked in the hostel). We then drove on to a popular night club, which had several busy rooms with DJs playing different versions of reggaeton music. I made many more backpacker friends in the club's large garden. There was a problem, however: everyone was very tall. This, combined with the background noise, meant that the conversation was going right over my head. Emboldened by lager and the sociable atmosphere I approached the only other short person in sight and engaged him in conversation. He was not particularly keen to chat: he turned out, in fact, to be the local drug dealer.

At about 4 am I left the club in pursuit of fried chicken. The streets of El Poblado were, as I had been promised, absolutely buzzing. I had no difficulty finding a food outlet and strolled happily down the main street, where the clubs had spilled out into a huge gathering of young Colombians. A man approached me with a big wooden tray, a common sight in the city, loaded with snacks and chewing gum. I politely waved him away but, to my surprise, he kept approaching. With a big clownish grin on his face he nudged the tray right into me and pushed me to one side with it. We laughed together at the joke but, when we parted, I realised something was amiss: he had swiped the phone from my right trouser pocket. I kept walking, humiliated, and he vanished into the crowd. It was a clever trick, but not clever enough: the phone in that pocket was a decoy, an old broken thing intended as a distraction. My real phone was tucked safely in a pouch under my shirt. Listen to your parents, folks.

I was more shaken by the incident than I cared to admit. I was frustrated at my poor judgement and the loss of my decoy phone, which I had actually planned to use as a defence against mugging. I spent the morning trying to make a new one out of an old phone case, some coins and sellotape. My story spread around the hostel as the morning wore on and the residents began to sober up. It got back to the one person I was hoping to keep it from.

"Richard!" cried Claudia as I tiptoed across the lobby, "I'm sorry but that is very stupid. I told you not to walk alone at night in El Poblado!"

I looked at my feet; there was no defence. I wondered if we backpackers are like toddlers: discovering our limits by pushing against them. The part of me that wanted to test myself against El Poblado had evaporated, and I'm glad to finally get it off my chest. I made sure my next adventure was much more tame.

~

Along with John and several others from the hostel I booked a place on a tour of Santa Elena, the township to the East of Medellín which is the true home of the Flower Festival. I had been told that the festival traces its origins to one Santa Elena resident's decision to carry his wares to market in Medellín on his back. This was an exaggeration at best: it was common for people to make this journey on foot with their loads (which could even include sick family members) on wooden chair-like frames. These frames, known as silletas, are now used exclusively to show off the region's flowers.

Our bus left Medellín and wound its way up hairpins to the relatively flat region above the city. It was a climb of around 800 meters and the temperature dropped noticeably. Our tour guide had provided each of us with a scarf and white paisa hat, the latter named after the people of the Antioquia region. I did wonder if our guide had a sense of humour: the disc-shaped hats were hopeless in windy mountain weather. On several occasions a gust caused the group to lose them en masse and have to run around in pursuit. As for the tour itself, we stopped first at a large statue of a silletero with his load and then drove on to a farm. The last part of this journey was done on foot along a dirt track with beautiful hedgerows on either side. The colonial-style farm building had been part-converted into a museum. In its expansive kitchen we sat down for a traditional meal, which included a local speciality: hot chocolate with a lump of cheese melted in it (an unpleasant and surprisingly greasy experience). The house overlooked the flower fields, where a vast number of species, from tall sunflowers to daisy-sized numbers, were displayed together (Colombia is actually the second most biodiverse country in the world). Exploring this garden was the highlight of the tour, and you can see why in the following picture.



Most of the farm's flowers had already been picked, boxed and delivered to Santa Elena's residents. They were busy spending the precious few days before the big parade attaching the flowers to their silletas in complex and beautiful designs. The catch was that each silletero would receive just one type of flower in their box. The event would start, therefore, with some frantic trading involving the whole community. This would have been going on at about the time I rolled into Medellín by bus the previous week.

My next tour was to Medellín's Comuna Trece, which translates as District 13. This impoverished part of the city was notorious for gang violence in the 20th and early 21st centuries, but is now - bizarrely - a tourist attraction. In the past couple of decades a combination of investment and grassroots community efforts have transformed the area, succeeding where violent military assaults failed. It was a focal point of the city's cocaine trade and the associated violence (Escobar's shadow looms large here), but the streets have been regenerated and are now full of dancers and artworks.

Our guide for the afternoon was Bryan, a resident who had taught himself to speak what he called "Street English" and later turned out to be a rapper. Before leading us up the hill into his neighbourhood he asked us not to give money to any of the children who would show off their dance moves to us. Giving to adult street performers, he said, would be fine, but the children should be encouraged to stay in school. Our first few stops were at pop-up street dance shows; we were evidently expected, but this was part of the fun. As we walked further the street art became progressively bigger, louder and more colourful. Some of the works were reproduced in the many eccentric souvenir shops.

We stopped at a small museum where the horror of the gang wars was brought to life. At one point the army was sent in but failed to eradicate the gangs. In the interest of claiming a victory the government secretly made deals with some of the gang leaders, so a false peace was created for a few months. As the buildings of the area became more and more damaged the street artists set to work claiming the wreckage as their own in protest. Most harrowing of all, however, was Bryan's own story of a gunfight from his childhood. He and his brother were watching from their window when a combatant backed right up their house to shelter by the wall. Seeing the boys looking out of the window, he told them to move for their own safety. They did so but, when they looked again, the man was dead.

Much of the investment in Comuna Trece has been spent on infrastructure: metro lines, a cable car and a series of public escalators traversing the steep slopes. At the top of the hill is a - relatively - big road on concrete stilts, and it was here that the tour ended. We had ice cream and enjoyed the sunset views over the city. I had time to follow the road away from the crowds to where things were quieter. Strangely quiet. Looking back along the road I could see what an engineering marvel it was and, from the footprint of the stilts, how many homes must have been demolished to make way for it. Just as I was reflecting on the ongoing costs of regeneration I abruptly reached the end of the road. It was unfinished, which explained the lack of traffic. A tall metal fence separated it from an older, dustier track.  I peeked through and saw rubbish spilling out of abandoned brick buildings. A chicken strode defiantly across the road.

Some of my friends at the hostel were heading to a party called "Gringo Mike's Big Gringo Tuesday". I turned it down as I had more important plans for the morning: a visit to the Botanical Gardens. (I was later vindicated in my decision when an Australian friend described the evening as "Just a big gringo f**kfest, to be honest".) I arrived at the ticket office early in the morning but had still failed to beat the queue. The gardens themselves were interesting but they were not what I'd come to see. They put on a special festival of their own every year,  which celebrates flowers from Colombia and beyond. These include some amazing flower sculptures, and the centrepiece this year was a wooden boat listing dangerously in a stormy sea of blue and white. I also enjoyed seeing some fat pitcher plants and the creative arrangements of tulips made by various tulip societies. It wasn't just the flowers that were beautifully decked out: many visitors had brought their highly accessorised dogs along.



The big day was nearly upon us. As a warm-up, much of the city was closed off for an enormous parade of classic cars. To my surprise this parade was led by perhaps a dozen of the city's bin lorries, polished up to perfection. Following these was a seemingly endless stream of cars, and my most vivid memory is of watching them negotiate a tricky speed bump. The next day I rose early and donned my new flowery shirt, paisa hat and garland of plastic flowers (I had acquired the latter in some nightclub or other). It was time for the cultural phenomenon which had first brought me to Medellín: the Desfile de Silleteros.

I found a good spot among the crowds lining a main road. The parade was opened by a single vintage car carrying three or four elderly people. They were dressed in white and had red scarves tied around their heads. These were some of the original silleteros who had taken part in the first parade in 1957. They were followed by a series of warm up acts: some police officers with their dogs; a terrifying armoured police vehicle (with flowers); a troupe of what I took to be Brazilian Carnaval performers. Finally the first silleteros appeared: the children who had competed in the junior category. Each carried a wooden silleta of the traditional form: a sort of stepped wooden backpack overflowing with flowers. They were chaperoned by members of the Scout Association, who kept them supplied with water and relieved them of their loads occasionally.

Next up came a lone woman, bent under the weight of her 70 Kg silleta. She carried her paisa hat in her hand because her head was busy with a strap supporting some of the weight. She had a huge grin on her face and was waving her hat to draw more and more cheering from the crowd. Every so often she span around to show off the enormous circular design on her back. It was a riot of colours and textures consisting of more flower varieties than I could possibly name. This silletera's name was María Claudia Atehortúa and she was the overall winner of the Feria de las Flores 2023.

After María came the rest of the silleteros who had competed in the emblemática category. These were the circular ones which I had grown used to and were all spectacular. There were several other categories: tradicional, which the children had been carrying; commercial in which the logos of sponsors, including Coca-Cola, were reproduced in flowers and monumental. The latter lived up to their name: wooden constructs burst out of a - usually - circular base; they were much bigger and heavier than the others. My favourite was an enormous lion's head with a mane of what looked like grasses gone to seed. The silleteros were evidently enjoying themselves, and every so often they'd put their loads down so that they could fully show them off. One man went right up to the crowd, reached in and emerged with his son in his arms; they waved to everyone together. It was a joy to watch the paraders pass by and transform from exhausted people under heavy loads to flowery, tortoise-like creatures once viewed from behind. It was a testament to both human ingenuity and human endurance. In the silleteros' six kilometre walk through the chequered streets of Medellín there was a sense of defiance, love and hope. Yet there was frailty as well: in every flower that fell from a silleta I was reminded that these beautiful artworks were temporary, and would be lost until the cycle began again for the next year's Feria.

I had time for one more adventure before leaving Medellín. I turned my nose up at the Pablo Escobar museum, which is run for profit by members of his family, and at the associated theme park and zoo. I set off instead on foot through El Pobaldo to the Museo El Castillo. This mansion was built by the architect Nel Rodríguez in the style (for some reason) of a French château. I arrived at the ornate gateway and saw a long curving driveway bordered by tall conifer trees. These, like many of the plants in the grounds, were covered in ghostly cobwebs of Spanish Moss (a sort of creeper which is neither Spanish nor moss). The whole place was reminiscent of the enchanted château in Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast. I brought my entry ticket for seventy thousand pesos: I would later learn that, back in the 1930's when the house was built, that sum would have bought me the entire property.

Inside I had a tour of the grand rooms and eclectic collection of (mostly European) oddities. My guide's use of the English language concealed a razor-sharp wit, and I'd like to share some of his descriptions with you:

"This is the only original carpet in the house which you can walk on, so please make the most of it."

"If you ask me how much the chandelier is actually worth, well I cannot tell you: my boss doesn't want me to know!"

"In this room we have a collection of seven hundred silver spoons donated to the family by a rich auntie. If you ask me why she donated them, well I can tell you: she was very rich and she had too many spoons."

I was reminded of a tour guide in Spain who had repeatedly referred to us, his audience, as his "family". A part of me had wondered if I should point out that the word isn't usually used in this context. I decided there was no need to be a killjoy and, if my new friend wanted to refer to me as family, who was I to stop him? The English language, I reasoned, belonged as much to these non-native speakers as it did to me - perhaps more so.

~

I was up early on the morning of my departure. The backpackers of the hostel - including, at last, some Colombians - were all fast asleep. Over breakfast at the Table I made one more friend: a French backpacker, who arrived, as many of us had, looking shell-shocked from their first metro journey. She asked me about safety in the area and my answer, unfortunately, got back to the one person I was hoping to keep it from.

"So, Richard," said Claudia during checkout, "You don't think El Poblado is safe?"

I thought for a moment. Of all the people I had met in Medellín, Claudia was the most proud of her city and how far it had come. In the backpacker community, however, my encounter with the pickpocket was by no means an isolated incident.

"I'm sorry, Claudia," I said, "But I don't."

Perhaps, had I stayed in Medellín longer, my assessment might have changed. Perhaps I could have given the Digital Nomad lifestyle a shot after all. The Highlands of Colombia, however, were calling me, and I couldn't miss my date with the world's tallest palm trees. I did not look back.

The seriousness of the history I've presented here was not lost on me during my visit to Medellín. My objective in this article was the juxtaposition of the old and the new; the violent and the beautiful; the cultural and the sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll. I have not presented events in chronological order and there may be factual inaccuracies - please shout if you spot them. In the interest of brevity I've omitted a lot of detail: the police officers in the parade, for example, were actually on bicycles, and had their dogs sitting to attention in little doggy side-cars. It's unexpected joys like these, especially when flowering out of hardship, that make travel worthwhile. I hope this article has motivated you to put a bag on your back, go somewhere new, and see some more of this crazy, kaleidoscopic world in which we live.


Links

Here's the promised "further watching", specifically the opening, minute 6:30 and minute 10:00 of this vlog by the Mexican backpacker Alan X El Mundo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiSNmmEQqIg


Editor's Note: More of indiekid's travels in the Americas can be found in his piece on travels in southern Chile, and in a two-part article on the Mexican leg of his trip with part one here and part two here.