A view of Guatapé, outside Medellín.

A view of Guatapé, outside Medellín.

Photographer: Fabiola Ferrero/Bloomberg
Economics

Pablo Escobar Slept Here: Is It Too Soon for Narco-Tourism?

Medellín’s mayor fumes over the popularity of guided trips through the drug lord’s old haunts.

Aram Balakjian, a 33-year-old Londoner, had a great time on his seven-month trip to Colombia last year. He toured the countryside on a motorbike, taking in sights like the Chicamocha Canyon, and polished his Spanish at a school in Medellín. He also took part in a raucous game of paintball at a decrepit lakeside villa that once belonged to Pablo Escobar. There, he and about a dozen other tourists ran around blasting each other with paint pellets. Balakjian got to play the drug kingpin himself. Holed up on the second floor and running low on ammo, he was taken down in a sneak attack by a pretend U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

It’s all fun and games to travelers streaming into Colombia seeking a real-life connection to the hit Netflix series Narcos, which depicts Escobar’s transformation from small-time dealer to drug lord with a net worth of more than $2 billion in 1987, according to Forbes. Tourists can check out his grave and the now-abandoned apartment building where his family lived. They can also pay hundreds of dollars to schedule visits with Escobar’s relatives and members of his entourage who promise an inside look at the cartel leader’s life, which ended in a Dec. 2, 1993, shootout with security forces. As many as 1 in 10 international visitors to Colombia are lured there by TV shows or movies that feature the country, according TCI Research, a Brussels-based agency.