Like many cities round the world, Medellín is laid out on a grid system. The streets run east to west and the roads run north to south. Each street and each road is numbered. So your address is made up of the number of the street you live on, the number of the road it intersects with, and the number of metres it is to the intersection.

The consequence is that it is almost impossible to get lost if you know the address of where you are going, and can keep your bearings about which way is north.

Just to keep you from getting too comfortable, some of the main streets in the centre have names as well as numbers, so you have to learn those too.