Pablo Escobar tour of Medellin lets you walk in the footsteps of a banal crimelord

Walk in the footsteps of one of South America's banal monsters with the Pablo Escobar tour of Medellin. The four-hour tour culminates with a handshake and photo-op with Escobar's brother, Roberto, who will answer your questions. You could ask him about his brother's feral hippos.

Yet, failure seems unlikely, given the huge interest in a man who, through cocaine trafficking and murderous ruthlessness, rose to become the seventh richest person in the world before being gunned down by police on a Medellín rooftop in 1993. It is not uncommon to see backpackers traversing the country with a copy of Killing Pablo, the 2001 biography by Mark Bowden, in hand.
Rodríguez adds that he does not have a problem with Escobar's story being told, but he is against him being mythologised. "I don't think there should be museums or tours or anything making him out to be a legend," he says.

In Pablo Escobar's footsteps (via We Make Money Not Art)

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MORE: colombia • crime • tasteless • tourism

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=121000023 Eric Iberri

You must mean Medellín.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OK42M52VJS2OAKNLPPQJ2YRJLU Tweedle

Having trouble discerning what was so “BANAL” about Escobar that the word needed to be used twice… other than an attempt to put him down as an ordinary criminal. But the fact is: the man was in a class by himself in his time and was certainly one of the more colorful criminals (even among a bunch of colorful, class-of-their-own Colombian cartel leaders).
- k_v
  
  Yeah. Banal?
  
  As a great man once said: you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
juan

I’m saving my vacation days for the Idi Amin walking tour of Uganda.
- flosofl
  
  I hear there’s a BBQ at the end of it.
jkwatson

Here’s a little documentary my friend Jeff Beck made about the hippos, and the people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc
Eduardo de Francisco

Sorry, I got lost. Who is this Rodríguez? Didn’t you mean Roberto, the brother?