Speaking of Escobar, I believe that most people have heard of his name. Indeed, Pablo Emilio Escobar, one of the most successful, ruthless, and efficient drug lords of all time, was born in 1949 in Rio de Janegro, Colombia, where he grew from a middle-class lifestyle to an extremely wealthy man and became the seventh richest man in the world in 1989.
At the height of his power, Escobar shipped large quantities of illegal drugs around the world, ordering political assassinations, gang murders, and even links to the Colombian government. We can only say that Mr. Escobar is very good at his work, but we are not talking here about how he got his estimated $30 billion of illicit wealth, look at those crazy mansions where he spends bloody money on purchases, because if one of the things Escobar is best at is spending money, then it is estimated that Pablo Escobar ships 15 tons of cocaine to the United States every day and earns $810 per second, which is enough to show that he has a lot of money on hand. And Escobar doesn't intend to keep all this illicit money in the bank, and he often hides it in a variety of places, including warehouses, fields and some of the large properties he owns. One of the properties is an extremely luxurious property called La Manuela.
La Manuela is a resort in Escobar, a 20-acre land resort with a luxury estate in Guatapur, just on the shores of the Peñol Reservoir, which he named after his daughter, La Manuela Escobar Pablo Escobar, who has also poured a lot of money into the place, including a huge swimming pool, tennis courts and stables. Escobar likes to buy a wide variety of vehicles, both at land and sea. People noticed that he bought himself 15 private jets and 6 helicopters, so when you're a powerful drug lord like Escobar, you might also buy a helipad large enough and a seaplane dock. Not only that, he built guard towers on this land, so no one entered there without his permission. However, just eight months before his death, it was attacked by the enemy and 200 kilograms of tnt was stuffed into one of its bathrooms and detonated.
After La Manuela was abandoned, the building was eroded by nature. At present, it is dilapidated and full of plants. People often play paintball in its ruins, so it's not a complete wasteland. Because Escobar hides money in strange places, about $2.1 billion a year goes missing, such as money being eaten by rats or destroyed. Another residence in Escobar was the Napoli Hacienda, a house that truly expressed Escobar's more playful side, and his wife recalled that the house was foreign and built in Port Rinfu, Colombia. The 7.7-square-mile estate is an astonishing size, even larger than Disneyland in Spain, and it offers him and his family a place to live, with some attractions inside that give it a theme park feel. The estate includes a Spanish colonial house, a sculpture park and a zoo with a variety of exotic animals, a bullring and a race track, while keeping his family safe in the heavily guarded manor.
In addition to that, Escobar has a big enough to have a private airport, after all he needs a place to store his private jet, and the house has plenty of room to store his large collection of antique and luxury cars after Pablo. Escobar died in 1993 and many of the original buildings on the property were demolished or renovated for other purposes, and now it has been transformed into a wonderful theme park.
Not all of Escobar's homes are in Colombia, and not all Colombians are like this, one of these houses is la casa grande, which he built on the Caribbean island of la ila grande, which has a population of just over 1,000 people and is one of the largest estates of Pablo Escobar, accessible only by boat from Cartagena. With more than 300 beautifully decorated rooms and a pure gold shower head in each bathroom, this house is a testament to how rich Escobar really is.
As Colombia's most powerful drug lord, Escobar's life is not peaceful, and in the trajectory of his life, there are only two endings, either to die at the hands of rival gangs or to rot in prison. But as a powerful man, Pablo Escobar somehow found a way to avoid being imprisoned by the United States while being protected. From the beginning, Escobar believed that he would rather die in a hail of bullets than use his vast wealth and influence to be extradited to the United States. He managed to persuade or force the local authorities to allow him to build his own prison, which meant that technically he would be extradited to the United States to be imprisoned, but on his own terms, remember that we were talking about Pablo Escobar, so of course this is not your typical government-approved self-built prison, this is the birth of the La Cathedral, also known as the Hotel Escobar, this prison is not entirely for Escobar to stay inside, but to keep his enemies outside, it has the best defense capabilities. It was built on a foggy mountainside to prevent any air attacks. It is guarded by specially selected men from Pablo.
The prison, or hotel, is full of modern conveniences, it has a casino, Escobar also built a playground for his daughter with a spa and a football pitch, because Escobar is a lover of the sport, he even once let the Colombian national team take all the way to his mountain prison, where he showed great enthusiasm for them and they played football together.
Of course, we now know that this is not the end of the story, and the government cannot turn a blind eye to Escobar's continued drug empire. Four of Escobar's deputies were reportedly tortured and murdered at la catedral. The Colombian government decided to transfer Escobar to a standard prison, but was refused. The hunt was followed again, using a force of 600 men specially trained by the U.S. Delta Force. The unit, known as the "Search Zone," was led by Colonel Hugo Martinez. On December 2, 1993, Escobar was shot and killed by the government to pursue him, and the La Catral prison was transformed into a monastery with a hint of irony by the world's most dangerous and powerful drug lord.
Years after the Los Angeles Cathedral was abandoned, many people demolished its original building while searching for the abandoned Escobar treasure. It wasn't until 2007 that a group of Benedictine monks came here and transformed it. Today, it is used as a place of religious pilgrimage.