Pablo Escobar's Islands
- wanderwitht
- Jan 15, 2016
- 3 min read
While living in Colombia, nothing better than to understand more about the most impacting historic moment of this beautiful country.
Some of you may already know about Pablo Escobar from the “History Channel” and some may also have seen the stories now played out on the show “Narco's”.
He was the head of a very powerful drug cartel in Colombia, at one point being responsible for 80% of cocaine being consumed in the world. In the year 1989, Forbes Magazine said he was worth +$30 billion U.S. dollars and was on the top ten list of the richest people in the world. Pablo was a very successful drug cartel leader, his way of control was known to be very drastic, he used fear to stay in power, this fear reached the highest level of the Colombian structure, so high that for many years there was no cases filed against the crimes he was commiting. The attempts that were filed had the responsible killed, this including judges, police officers and prosecutors. He was responsible for the killing of more than 10,000 people, not including the killings his body guards were blamed for (civilians from more than 250 bombs). He ran his drug cartel in Medellin and the Antioquia region of Colombia. There was a rival cartel in Cali, which is located near Medellin, and the conflict between the two caused the death of thousands of civilians.
Pablo owned many estates, luxury cars, 6 helicopters, 15 planes, islands, and even owned properties in the United States in Miami.
The island “Isla del Pirata” I stayed (check the past posts) was only 5 minutes away (boat ride) from the islands that he owned in the Caribbean. Fact that I had no idea until one of the locals at the island took us out on his boat and showed us these places.
Our guide said that the locals loved him, since he always helped the poor, he built homes for them on the islands and also in Medellin he built full neighborhoods and soccer fields. Our guide which was the local of the islands said that Pablo Escobar had his fathers home built.
The homes on the islands he owned were so big, you could actually call them palaces. Now they have an abandoned look, and they are habited by locals and wild pigs native from the islands. Just the way they look you can tell they were once beautiful palaces with big entrances and beautiful views of the Caribbean ocean. We were told that some of them were used only to store cocaine, and this was also one of the delivery channels to the United States, since it was a straight shot by boat to get there. The locals told us that he use to fly onto his island with his helicopters as he had a helipads on the islands.
Once he was killed, all of his belongings and properties were appropriated by the government, nothing new about that!! However, the interesting thing is that they sank some of his planes by the islands and now they are being overtaken by the coral reefs. So right by the places where we were snorkeling (check the past posts) we got to see some of his planes underwater.
Check out all the photos of the islands and the planes under water! Keep in mind that not that many years ago, if we were to be this close in the water and taking photos of his property, we would have been killed by the armed guards protecting the islands.
Wander on…never stop wandering!
Free Bird! ✈
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