Inside Pablo Escobar’s abandoned Colombian mansion blown up by vigilantes
Nestled in a stunning Colombian costal resort town lies an abandoned mansion which once belonged to the world’s top drug king pin.
Pablo Escobar’s mansion, dubbed ‘La Manuela’ lies abandoned in Guatape, Colombia next to a man-made lake popular with locals.
The famous king pin reigned terror in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, and created the Medellín cartel, which still distributes cocaine today.
And with his success in the drug market came great wealth – he was estimated to be worth nearly £19 billion, which he splashed out on various things.
He owned a sprawling estate in Colombia worth more than £50 million and various mansions – one of which was La Manuela.
But the stunning mansion was built with a unique purpose: to store cash and cocaine within its walls.
Inside La Manuela
La Manuela was constructed with double layered walls, giving Escobar the perfect place to hide mass amounts of illegal cash and cocaine.
Named after Escobar’s young daughter Manuela, the villa once had a tennis court, football pitch, helipad, stables, motorcycle tracks and a massive security force.
More than 20 acres surrounded the villa, on the shores of a stunning blue manmade lake.
But the mansion had a sad demise – in 1993, a vigilante group called The Los Pepes – People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar – planted 220kg of TNT in a bathroom, blowing up the entire residence.
Months later, Escobar himself was gunned down in a bloody shootout in the Colombian capitol.
Decades on from its demise, now all that’s left of La Manuela is a shell of a building covered in vegetation.
Escobar’s faithful gardener kept tending to the land even after his death in 1993, until he was evicted in 2019.
La Manuela is now a destination for thrill seekers to explore – though it is closely guarded.
Since his death, Colombia has become somewhat of a destination for those fascinated by Escobar’s life and death.
But authorities have tried to crack down on the ‘narcotourism’, and have destroyed many of his former homes.
If the properties are sold, choosing what to do with the ‘drug-funded’ home and proceeds could prove legally difficult.
The government is said to be trying to get rid of the infamous cocaine hippos.
The Colombian drug lord’s pet hippos have been described as ‘very dangerous’ and were first imported to the South American country in the 1980s from Africa.
The Colombian Ministry of Environment began to sterilize them in November, but they had been living freely in rivers and reproducing without control, leading to them becoming an invasive species and a threat to the ecosystem.
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