At the age of 44 years and one day, Pablo Escobar ended his reign as worlds number one cocaine dealer in the city of Medellín. His way of connect to people were to most people slightly abnormal, as he either got people killed, hooked on drugs, jailed or paid them decent bribes. I almost danced on his grave, but I never saw his white marching powder.

After some mildly boring days in the ghost town of Tolú, I have entered the cocaine and fake boob capitol of Colombia and luckily, I have found some people to hang around with. I have been so clingy to the people of the hostel I am staying, that I probably have embarrassed a significant amount of adult dung beetles in their feeble attempt to swarm newly hatched camel droppings. There are allegedly numerous things to both see and do here in Medellín but I must admit that most days have been inside at the hostel, just swarming gently.
In 2006, almost 230.000 breast augmentations were performed in Colombia and with the cost of more than half a years salary for the 58% of the country living below the poverty line, I must admit that it is a high number. Colombians are mad about breast implants and where ever you go, there are boobs and cleavages. Not all the girls have the slender bodies of Barbie dolls but it seems that boobs are for all sizes to accentuate. Since Colombia is literally up front with breast implants, there is no way that anyone can walk on the streets here and not notice the artificially enhanced females. Young teenagers, overweight blobs, the classical sex bomb, ugly woman, old women and the plain Jane all have fake boobs. The only two categories of women I haven’t yet seen with enormous breasts are midgets and handicapped women. I must admit, though, that even if I were warned about the vast number of airbags with legs, I am positively surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. The thing that I am most intrigued by, is that it seems that any woman that already has passed well into motherhood, do have the absolutely biggest breast around. I might be wrong, but having seen a relatively high number of mother and daughter shopping together, there can’t be much room for failure in my attempt to conclude. It does not matter what age the daughter has and it does not matter how old the mother is - the difference in size is baffling. As a relatively normal 32 year old, when noticing a random mother and daughter it is nothing but instincts that make you look at the daughter first, because the mother is - well, a mother and probably old. Her chest is normally very hard to miss, because the amount of skin they reveal work as an absolutely failsafe eye catcher, but when the mother is in fact walking 3 steps behind the daughter and when the tip of her chest is aligned with the shoulders of the daughter - shifting from daughter to mother seems like the only thing to do. It has nothing to do with beauty and nothing to do with attraction. When you see radically inflated concrete balloons attached to the chest of a woman, with less mobility, more revealed skin, less bounciness, higher score on the ready-to-burst-o-meter and less covering clothes than the daughters pair of bought boobs, it is very hard to figure out the correct reaction. Should the jaw drop? Should you look away? Should you ask to touch them? Should you laugh, cry or get scared? Ignoring them would normally be the correct way of behavior but when you witness phenomenons that you have never witnessed before - you look! Even if the phenomenon is catching an anaconda, a lion giving birth, watching a UFO land on your roof with small aliens hanging from a small ledge trying to enter you chimney, witnessing a person eat one of a cows four stomaches or massively large fake boobs - you look! Mankind are observers and they look at things that is weird, nice, ugly, beautiful, absolutely mad or superbly strange. We can’t help it and I don’t believe anyone saying that they don’t benefit from observing and I do not believe anyone that can look me in my eyes and say they wouldn’t look at the slow walking mothers. When boobs come in this size - you look! You stop looking when you either crash into a person, a shelf, a dog, a chicken or maybe another pair of breast - and sometimes, it seems that you can’t shake them off. The expression "pearls on a string" definitely could get another dimension added to it down here.

Pablo Escobar is a hero to some but hated by most. With the effective and inescapable business strategy named "Silver or Lead", with the intended meaning "accept a bribe or face assassination", he has both caused a lot of deaths and made a lot of people rich and crooked. First of all he made himself rich, though, and Forbes Magazine estimated his fortune and business high enough to rank as the seventh richest man in the world. His company, the Medellín cartel, controlled 80% of the worlds cocaine marked and he would ship 30 tons of cocaine to USA every month. To me, these numbers are enormous and I have a hard time trying to relate them to real life. Escobar was a man that actually build his own prison, for him to be comfortable in while serving time and he built churches to get popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church. He has more or less singlehandedly caused the death of thousands of people and I some how assume, that he didn’t really have what regular people call good close friends. Knowing fractions of the history of this colorful individual, I didn’t really know how to behave when visiting his grave. I had seen some pictures of the grave and I had created a mental image of what would wait for me in the cemetery. Making the rather hasty decision of leaving the hostel for a little grave-spotting, I more or less ran out of the hostel and it wasn’t before I arrived at the metro station that I realized that I had absolutely no clue of where I was going. For some reason I connected the words "The grave of Mr. Escobar" and "visit" with nothing but irrationality and in a blink of an eye, my common sense, my sense of direction, my planning gene and my regular curiosity disappeared. I didn’t know the name of the cemetery, I didn’t know the Spanish word for neither "cemetery" or "grave", I didn’t know how far it was, how I would get there or if I needed money.

Navigating my living body to see the earthly remains of a dead body, must be a proof that my Spanish is improving - unless the people I talked to managed to connect the words "The grave of Mr. Escobar" and "visit" with quite a bit of rationality and sent me off in the right direction. I pictured a grand cemetery with huge tombs, small mausoleums, old white and stone carved statues and a rather awesome cathedral somewhere near. Arriving at the cemetery, not actually knowing that it was a cemetery, I saw nothing but plain green grass, some flowers randomly placed among the small and flat gravestones and a relatively modern church. As the taxi stopped, he asked me how long I wanted to stay and since I thought I had to search for the grave, walk a bit up the green hills and find my way back, I evaluated 20-30 minutes as an appropriate answer. Judging by the look of the cabdrivers face, he probably thought this was too much time to spend at the cemetery and he said he would wait in the car and made me follow him out on the greens. I didn’t really understand what he was up to, because we were walking towards the edge of the cemetery and towards the backside of the modern church and I was a bit baffled when he asked two workers, as they were laying down flowers on a grave, on the whereabouts of Mr. Escobars grave - and they pointed down at the grave they were actually laying down flowers on.

That was it? A flat stone with his name on and some sort of green bushes covering the area he was buried under? Where was the framed picture of him? Where was the monument? And where were the other people who wanted to pay him a visit? And maybe the biggest question - what should I do? Was snorting a pound of cocaine appropriate or should I spit on his grave? Should I dance on his grave or should I kneel down and thank him? Should I put down flowers or should I rip up the ones that was already there? I didn’t know. I didn’t have a pound of cocaine and even if I did have it, it must by any measurement be too much to handle. I didn’t have any music so that ruled out dancing about on his grave. My knee is for some strange reason not working properly, so I didn’t want to risk dysfunctional knees on a cemetery - I’m not even religious enough to spend much time there. I didn’t bring flowers with me and I definitely don’t need flowers when traveling, so that automatically ruled out the options with the flowers. To me there was only one option left: spit on his grave. After considering the possible fatal repercussions of his still alive companions, fans and dangerous colleagues and since the grave surely must have video surveillance, I chose the sane and somewhat secret last option. I took some pictures and left. Asking him "is your stepson actually working the streets in Cartagena and did I actually talk to him?" as I was leaving his grave, his answer drowned in the whistling of the trees, the singing of the birds and the sound of my feet. I should have paid more attention to the answer and now I will never know the truth.

I have spent two nights discovering the nightlife of Medellín and the last nightclub we went to, is definitely one of the most memorable nightclubs ever. I only heard of the place from a fellow traveler and he referred to it as "The Naked Club". Apparently there is a section of the disco, where you could just get naked and dance around without clothes. You didn’t have to - it was just an option. Following the crowd, we ordered two taxis and took off. Only one of us had the directions, so we managed to get the cab drivers to follow each other, so both cabs would get us there safely. Little did we know, that we got the most aggressive of the cab drivers and when the other driver wanted to perform some sort of light service on the car in the middle of the ride, I told our cab driver that I am not paying for the time we spend waiting for the other taxi. Releasing a heavy shower of Spanish swearwords and vividly body language, I feared for my own safety as I was sitting in the front passenger seat. We had no idea of why he got so upset and we had even a harder problem trying to understand the words that were coming out of his mouth, but there is at least one nice thing about pure anger and frustration. It does not matter what language you speak, the elevated voice, the volume of the voice, the waving with the arms, the slamming with the doors and the look in the eyes makes it clear to anyone that something is slightly wrong. I don’t think he knew what power he had, but when a furious and rather big man shouts angrily at four inexperienced gringos, you don’t put up much of a resistance.

After an amazing display of Latino anger, we arrived safely at the nightclub who turned out to be everything I had not expected. It is hard to describe how it looked, because it didn’t look of anything, yet it contained everything. As I was sitting in a couch just gazing at the spectacle around me, one of the group was writing some thoughts in a little book. He was struggling with finding the words and I asked to help. This is what I wrote:

Amazingly influenced by the most powerful Ron in Colombia, the surroundings play a trick on my mind. Spiders in the roof, wings of flies circling over our heads and nothing really seem to fit into place. The music is from nowhere around here and the people are far to drunk. Having the 3rd drink of the night, the atmosphere definitely becomes more pleasurable. The animals become friendly, the creepiness is not so creepy anymore and most things seems familiar and non-hostile. But yet the security of the sound of "La Bamba" gets it all mixed up. It’s from the western world. It’s from the drafting board of some money greedy bastards from the 70’s. It’s what the white trash hates, it’s what the black race recent, and it’s what makes the free world free.

No one was naked, but the adjacent rooms contained costumes, horse tails and masks to cover any naked body. Allegedly you are supposed to be naked in here and allegedly it happens - we didn’t have the balls and kept them safely covered in our pants.
I will not brag about being the most football interested person in the world but I can not imagine visiting South America without going to a football match. Luckily for us, this town has two teams that battles in the same league and they would clash together on this very night. It was an irresistible venue to attend, knowing that my days in Medellín soon are counted. Most of the hostel was going to the game and when 15 gringos enter a stadium filled with mad Colombian football fans, they get some attention. The atmosphere was the thing that I would try to get caught by, as the match itself to me is relatively uninteresting. Getting caught by the atmosphere is no problem, when you have people singing, dancing, jumping, shouting, playing instruments and chanting right next to you. Spending the time from arriving at the stadium to kick-off time just by looking around and try to feel the tension of the two rivals. Finding the only spot with some room for us, we were placed right next to the mad and caged fans of Team Medellín (red) and some kind of placed among the less mad and uncaged supporters of Team National (green). The mad and caged fans of Team National were across the stadium so everything seemed kind of idyllic.

My first task was to find a team to support. The red team seemed massively outnumbered but put of a good show. I liked them. I liked the songs, even if I didn’t know what they were singing and hearing the tune of the song is relatively difficult, when 2000 people sing loud and out of tune. I liked the color and the choice become more and more easy. Not knowing that I sat right next to some rather passionate green supporters, I made my choice and became red for one night. Luckily there were some reds right in front of me, that took me under their wings and learned me the basics of routing for the red team. They taught me how to ignore the constant derogatory shouting from the greens, the words for some of the songs and how to shout derogatory back at the greens. The greens tried to recruit me during the most of the first period but after refusing to swap side to the green, the greens next to me faced a true battle of the fans.

The game had most things that I associate with Latin American football: loud fans, strips of paper in the air and on the fields, drums, trumpets, fire amongst the spectators, firecrackers, lots of name calling, trouble between the fans and throwing of all sorts of things. Being at the stadium was not an unsafe experience, though. I got searched twice before I got in, and even a lighter was almost frowned upon bringing in. Most things that was flying through the air was plastic cups filled with water. The game itself was just a backdrop of the battle of the fans and after a first half without goals, the throwing of stuff really took off. Sitting in the middle of the battle zone, very close to the mad and caged red fans and amongst some more or less friendly green fans, we found ourself being target for many showers of UFO’s. We just enjoyed the sight as more and more people got involved in the battle and it wasn’t before we realized that some of the cups that were thrown didn’t exactly contain pure water. Getting sprinkled in the urine of some fanatic red team supporter made us retreat until the game started again (mental note to self: wash t-shirt). The players were constantly target for cups and water and it is the first time in my life I have seen a "corner protection program". Dressed almost as Stormtroopers from Star Wars, heavily protected policemen guarded the players as they were taking a corner kick. Because of the corner protection program, the corners were absolutely not in world class and were more fun taking a photo of, than paying attention to the actual game.

The game ended 1-0 to the greens and left me together with some slightly depressed fans for the red team. What could we do? The greens had us outnumbered on the tribune and got a lucky goal. The reds played alright and the game seemed to end with a draw. The reds partly won the battle of the fans but that is still not approved by FIFA as a valid form of winning a football match, so we looked at each other, shook hands, hugged and just said: we’ll win the next one …