Villa Hermosa after dark

I went back to Villa Hermosa. The first time I was there for lunch at midday; this time I arrived in the afternoon and stayed until night, and it is a different neighbourhood.

Villa Hermosa is a barrio on the eastern slope above the centre and also the name of the whole comuna 8. The streets climb so steeply that from a car you look out over the roof of the house below you. Brick buildings, a shop below, a flat above, laundry on the roof, motorbikes on every corner.

A house with almost no windows

I was visiting a house that rather got to me.

Modest from outside, large inside. And almost windowless, at least not in the sense a Czech pictures a window: no windows onto the street, because the street is loud and steep and nobody wants a view of other people's cars. The light comes from above and from inner spaces. From outside it looks like a closed brick box; inside it is roomy and bright.

It took me a while to realise this is neither poverty nor an unfinished job. It is the logic of a city where the weather is the same all year and where nobody heats or air conditions. A south facing window is not a solar gain anyone wants, and glass onto the street is just noise and a way in. So you build inwards.

The roof terrace does the rest. That is where you go, and that is where you can see.

Arroz con leche

I was given rice pudding.

Arroz con leche is a traditional Colombian dessert and it is served hot here, not cold. Rice cooked in milk with cinnamon, sweet and thick, with a piece of bread on the side and a slice of white quesito cheese.

The cheese was the surprise. Unsalted fresh cheese with a sweet dessert sounds like a mistake and it works beautifully: the dessert is very sweet and the cheese balances it. It is the same principle as figs in syrup with fresh cheese, another Antioquian classic. Sweet and cheese simply go together here and nobody finds it odd.

It was hot enough that you ate it slowly. Which is probably the point.

And then the city lit up

This is what makes staying until dark worth it.

Medellín sits in a valley and the houses climb its walls as far as they can. By day it is simply a large city in a bowl. After dark those slopes become something else: the lights are not on a plane, they are stacked above one another from the valley floor to the ridge, with dark bands running between them where it is too steep to build.

A photograph cannot do it. A photograph turns a lit slope into a smear, because the eye sees depth and the lens does not. But still.

About safety, since people ask

Comuna 8 appears on every list of neighbourhoods to avoid.

I was there in the evening, walked the street, took photos with my phone in my hand, and not once did I feel threatened. People were sitting outside bars, children were out, a family crossed the road with their shopping. It was not empty, and that is usually the thing that decides it.

I do not want to make a rule out of it. I was there with locals, which is a difference, and I was on a street where things are happening, not three blocks higher up. But the idea that the whole of comuna 8 is a no go zone after dark did not match what I saw.

The only thing that genuinely made me uneasy was the traffic.

Traffic and motorbikes

This is the thing no guidebook tells you forcefully enough.

A street on a slope, narrow, cars in both directions, parking along both edges, and motorbikes threading through the middle. A motorbike here is not a machine for enthusiasts, it is how the city lives: deliveries, the commute, a whole family on one bike. They ride between the lanes, from the right, from the left, into oncoming traffic when there is no other way.

As a pedestrian you have a permanent sense that something is bearing down on you. Mostly you are right.

And then came an image I will not forget. A man crossed the road carrying a stack of boxes as tall as he was, squared up, tied, balanced with one hand. He walked with it along the main road, between the motorbikes, at night, on a slight incline.

As a safety guy I counted about six things there that back home would need paperwork: the weight of the load, the view blocked by it, walking on the carriageway, visibility at night, mixed traffic with motorcycles, manual handling above the limit. And then it struck me that this man does it every day, and that his job is exactly this: getting goods from A to B on a street no van will drive up.

I have no clever conclusion. I just keep it in my head next to the sentences about how we calculate the maximum weight of a manually handled load.