"9 Pros & 4 Cons To Living and Working Remotely in Medellin Colombia" -- What would you add to Chris's list?

Ok so...first I'm a bit jealous of all the remote workers, I really haven't figured out any way of doing that, I probably don't really have the right education or creativity for it, but I'd love to do it and if I could, hell even non-remote it would be in Medellin.

I should also say I currently own a place in Medellin so I do have some experience with some of this stuff, I just unfortunately can't live there full time because of the above...plus the visa nonsense.

1) I've never bought a Civica...you really don't need it. It does save you a tiny bit of money on each trip, but here's what I do. When I get to a station and there's no line, I pre-pay like...5-10 trips. Each one is 2,000 pesos now (IIRC, it was 1800 but obviously things change) you get what appears to be a regular single trip credit card looking thing, only you just retain it until there's no value left. Actually on the last trip the machine will just ask that you insert the card and it takes it. The concept is the same, contactless entry through the fare gates...only you don't need to go through the hassle of getting the civica.

Now my cons with the Medellin transportation is the cost vs connectivity. My home town is Vancouver, so I'll use it as an example. A ticket purchased for the skytrain is transferrable for (IIRC) 90 minutes. So you can go from the skytrain to the bus for one cost. That's not REALLY how it works in Medellin. You can buy "integrado" tickets but they're route specific and you have to visit the ticket booth to do it. The only one that's included is metro-to-metrocable. There's a new Transvia...it's kinda shiny and cool, though I'm not sure it was 100% necessary for the route it's on. That being said, you can't use your metro fare as a jump on for the Transvia. Anyone who lives in Medellin and earns local salaries that takes transit will company about this. I've known people who had to take 3 buses to get to work...that's 1,700-1,900 pesos PER BUS each way per day. That's just not fair. Best policy would be for them to up the fare, but make it inclusive. Now I'm not sure that would work with the local city buses because of how their run, but that's another kettle of fish. At the very least, the metro/metrocable/transvia should all be included in 1 ticket, make the ticket good for 90 minutes or something.

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