Colombia Dispatch: Park of Light

Continuing with our blog hiatus break, this time I am bringing you images from my birth city of Medellin (medallo or "medal" to the locals, metrallo to those who want to make fun of the city´s no-longer-deserved ultra-violent reputation - metralleta is the Spanish word for "machine gun" - or medhaleen to English-speaking tourists who haven´t taken any Spanish classes).

In any case, I´m not sure that these were in place the last time I visited Medallo but I couldn´t help but feel awe as I walked off a downtown side-street earlier today and smack into the Parque de la Luz (the Park of Light) near City Hall and right next to the old main train station.

On their own, each cement stick looked pretty damn ugly and the lack of real foliage would make it seem a monument to anti-environmental causes, but standing together and with the high-noon sun shining down on the "trees" it was pretty darn impressive. So if Bogota was about horseys, Medallo, at least for today, was about cement sticks, sunlight and shadows.