Medellín was a really interesting city. The taxi drive from the airport is pretty epic. I arrived at night and it's an hour long trip, at about 15-20min in you go over a ridge and all of a sudden you can see all the lights of the city below. My taxi guy thought he was a rally car driver and was doing triple the speed limit weaving and winding down the mountain range.
I stayed in the beautiful leafy backpacker area of Poblado in a great hostel called Happy Buddha. Despite its reputation as being a party hostel, the facilities were pretty schmick. My dorm had its own bathroom attached with 2 showers, toilet and double basin. Considering there was only 8 of us at full capacity, that's a pretty good person to shower ratio.
Met a bunch of really cool people, lots of Aussies too. At one stage there were 5 of us there who realised we all lived within a 3km radius of each other back home. Needless to say there will be a reunion.
Met up with Jen from work back home and her fiancé (who's from Medellín but lives in Melbourne and his also an architect) for lunch and Eduardo took me to meet his previous coworkers at his old firm, Opus. A few days later I went back and met with them again and spent time there having the history and development of the city and the slums explained to me and asking questions. Was very worthwhile.
Medellín has built a number of projects to try and improve life in the slums. One of those projects is a series of "parque bibliotecas" (park libraries) in the slums or low income areas. They provide a place to access computers, books and free learning workshops, but are also located on large sites with gardens, playgrounds, basketball courts etc. I visited 3 of these parque bibliotecas over a couple days, each designed by a different architect.
Medellín has also built 2 "metro cables" which are cable cars up to the top of the steep slums that are linked in with the metro train infrastructure. One of them is a very popular tourist activity because you get to fly over the slum but can also pay to get to a park right up the top of the mountain. One of the parque bibliotecas is mid way up so I got off and strolled around and over to the library. The Main Street was so busy and noisy, very full of life. The library itself was closed for repairs (it was sponsored by the Spanish royal family who had a set date to come and "open" the library so the end of the initial construction was very rushed and therefore shoddy) but was a good experience just seeing where it's located. It has quite a presence up on the mountain, and a very grand scale compared to the surrounding self built houses.
The other metrocable and library were located in Communa 13 which is apparently somewhere you just can't go as a tourist. Well I wasn't so convinced so I went anyway. A very tall american friend I met at the hostel decided to come with me to take a look, not really knowing where I was taking him. I think the look on his face when he realised where we were ("hang on... Are we in Communa 13?!? Everyone has told me I can't go here!) was the funniest part of the day. We rode the metro cable up to the top and back, at the top they're building big "social housing" apartment blocks where they've rehoused some of the city's slum residents. Esteban at OPUS was explaining the various problems this creates. Considering Medellín's very violent history, a lot of people from different areas in the city don't trust each other and are afraid of getting attacked still, even though this is mostly just imagined and no longer the reality. 
Next I flew to Cartagena where I met with a couple of the guys I'd met in Medellín, and also Amanda who I met in Rio. I stayed in the old city which is full of brightly coloured Spanish colonial houses. More partying ensued.
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