[ Dec.2016 ] The most interesting thing we saw in the sightseeing tour in Medellin in Colombia was Botero Plaza.
Here you will find as many as 23 large sculptures by world famous Fernando Botero who was born in Medellin.
Most of his works are representing fat people, fat animals or fat things.
He is 84 years old and alive and well.
Maria, our plump guide said “He did not paint fat people from the first.
One day he drew a guitar and found that the central hole was too small compared with the outline.
But he liked this unbalanced ratio, so since then he has been drawing this kind of shapes”.
And she continued “Anyway, it is wonderful that he sees fat people 
beautiful, isn’t it”.
Well, when she said that, we had to agree.
In fact, not only her, but there were many muscly chubby people like the ones Botero represents in this region.
So it could be natural for him to draw them.
These works of him in the Plaza were already exhibited around the world and in the end he donated them here.
Maria said that he himself designed this Plaza.
In front of the Plaza, there was the Antioquia Museum and they say that you could see more works of Botero here, but we did not go in.
In fact, we had thought that this museum was included in our itinerary, so we did not go to Botero Museum in Bogota.
Seeing many of his sculptures in the Plaza, we were satisfied anyway, so never mind…
There was a small cafe called El Laboratorio de Cafe in the same building of the museum.
Colombia is famous for its coffee, but apparently most of the good coffee beans are exported and local people drink Nescafe and the like.
The owner of this cafe thinks that is a shame and started this cafe so that local people drink and find the real good taste of coffee.
It was New Year’s Eve by the way.
People in Colombia do cleaning on the day like Japanese people and they were in the middle of cleaning inside of the cafe, so we sat at the outside table and had a break.
A young member of staff came out and started making coffee for us, explaining the process as he did so.
It was pleasant to see him doing it seriously and passionately.
He was using the equipment made in Japan.
