Drug lord's zoo becomes tourist trap

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE

An abandoned zoo built by the drug boss Pablo Escobar at the height of his wealth and notoriety and now home to a family of wild hippos is to be turned into a tourist attraction.

The Government said the zoo would be turned into a public attraction to provide jobs and bolster the local economy now that new legislation had ended a 10-year legal battle with the late trafficker's family.

The rest of Escobar's sprawling estate, the Hacienda Napoles, will be turned over to peasants driven from their land by Colombia's 40 years of civil war.

"Hacienda Napoles will provide environmental tourism in the region, which will benefit the locals and attract a large number of tourists, domestic and international," the country's senior anti-drugs official, Alfonso Plazas, said. "What we want to do here is build a tourist attraction and a museum of Colombian crime."

The seizure of the estate and its zoo - once filled with exotic animals imported without licences from Africa - follows a 10-year fight with Escobar's wife and children for control of the property. New legislation has made it easier for the Government to seize property that was bought with drug money.

Escobar, who was killed by the Colombian police in 1993, built the 3000ha estate during the 1980s near the town of Puerto Triunfo, 160km north of the capital, Bogota. It was reportedly the site of notorious, drug-fuelled parties at which Escobar would entertain his guests and partners from the Medellin drugs cartel.

At the time, Escobar, the son of landless peasants, was believed to be the seventh richest man in the world thanks to his cocaine smuggling network that controlled the supply of the drug to much of the US.

While he lived there, Escobar placed the small aircraft he used on his first drugs flight to the US above an archway at the entrance.

For years the estate has been abandoned, and home to a small number of families who had been driven off their land. Like much of the property, the aircraft has been taken by looters and souvenir hunters. Several rusting cars - part of a fleet of top-of-the-range American vehicles owned by Escobar - lie in a garage. Escobar once imported Al Capone's car from Chicago - likening himself to the mobster.

But recent reports from the estate say the only thing thriving there is a family of hippos, which have made the patches of jungle on the estate their home. Six animals out of a total of 10 have been born in the wild - almost certainly the only example of a wild hippo birth outside their native Africa.

The hippos are the remnants of what was once a well-cared for zoo stocked with giraffes, lions and rhinos. After Escobar's death, the Government transferred most of the other animals to other zoos but left the hippos and some zebras. The zebras have now gone but the hippos are thriving and have reproduced close to a muddy lake next to the Magdalena River.

Locals say that at night the hippos leave the lake and wander about the estate, making regular trips to the stables where they use a salt lick - a large block of salt - that the families have put there for their cows.

"They tear down the fence every time I put it up and turn everything into a mess but what can I do," said Luis Perea. "They are huge."

Colombia remains riven by violence and by the drugs trade. Last month it was revealed that a 1991 report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency named the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, as a close friend of Escobar and someone who was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high Government levels".

The inclusion of Uribe's name on a list of more than 100 "narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations" reopened questions that have long dogged him about his drug links.

Colombia is one of America's biggest recipients of military aid and the Bush Administration has said that Uribe, a right-winger, is a close ally in both the war on terror and the war on drugs.

- INDEPENDENT