Editorial Note: In April, I took a month off in Medellin. For me, this meant an interesting and diverting month. For you, this means 30 days of posts about my vacation. I’ll try to make them somewhat amusing.
I’m amazed that Paisas ever get anything done at all. Medellin’s climate is perfectly conducive to massive laziness in two important ways.
Temperate
First of all, the air temperature is basically perfect all the time. Sure, late at night you might occasionally want a sweater or light jacket, and during the midday a little breeze and some shade might be nice, but, by and large, the temperature never makes you uncomfortable.
This is reflected in the architecture: Windows are very large, and central heating and/or air conditioning relatively uncommon. (They seem to be mostly employed in large public spaces in which artificial ventilation is mandatory in any case.)
In principle, you don’t need walls here; a roof is sufficient. (In practice, you see a lot of restaurants built along these lines.) So the climate wouldn’t have given the original settlers here a lot of impetus to build much of anything.
Humid
The second laziness-inducing climatological factor is the humidity. Medellin’s humidity isn’t the punishing variety you get, say, in New Jersey; in fact, if you’re just sitting around (or moving slowly) you probably wouldn’t even notice it. As soon as you begin to exert yourself, though, it’s buckets-o-sweat time.
So you’ve got a mild climate that doesn’t demand much of you coupled with a sneaky humidity that discourages all but minimal effort. (Also, the hilly terrain turns almost any activity into at least light exercise.) All in all, I’m surprised that Paisas aren’t the laziest people in the world.
For the record, they strike me as quite industrious.
