Photo: Michael Levine-Clark/Creative Commons
They are among the last survivors of the MedellÃn Cartel, regaining their freedom from the confines of a narco-estate by marching to the Magdalena River. When Hacienda Napoles was thriving with the cocaine fortune of Pablo Escobar, there were four hippos, a giraffe and plenty of imported plumage to keep the drug lord’s close business associates and inner circle of professional hitmen, entertained. Even rouge pilots returning from a drug run to the Everglades would delight in a tour of the ranch accompanied by mini-Uzi wielding “zookeepers.”
According to popular legend surrounding the mansion in Puerto Triunfo (Antioquia), dried hippo excrement was a highly effective agent in concealing the smell of cocaine before crated and dispatched from the hacienda’s airstrip.