Traffic and driving

Have you driven around southern Italy, Rome, Naples or Sicily? Maybe a few Greek islands? Have you seen the traffic in Armenia, Turkey or Egypt? And did it seem insane by our standards? Then believe me, next to Medellín it was nothing.

Traffic in Medellín is genuinely something you do not forget. Not only is it extremely dense, it is also fast. Unless you happen to be crawling in a queue, everyone simply drives quickly and you get fractions of a second to decide. Add an enormous swarm of motorbikes of every kind, for which essentially no rules apply. They pass you by centimetres, maybe millimetres. Do not step on it? Then you do not move. And yet I have not seen a single crash so far, and the cars are not as battered as they are in, say, Naples.

If I may give one piece of advice, think very carefully about your driving skills before you rent a car here.

I have well over a million kilometres behind me and used to drive 5000 km a month. I have driven that southern Italy, and Greece, and I train professional drivers. So I think I am a good and experienced driver. Even so, I am glad I do not have to drive here. Uber is technically illegal but widely used and cheap, and there are alternatives. The buses somehow run, the metro somehow works. Roads in the city are decent, with the occasional hole. It gets worse outside the city, in the villages. If you are renting and you know you will not stay inside town, definitely take an SUV. It is not about comfort, it will often decide whether you get there at all.