Friday, November 17, 2017

Salento and Manizales 11/13-11/18/2017


  • Monday November 13th

In Colombia the Andes split into 3 spines. To get to Salento, we have to go down from the mountains in Bogotá to the plains, then back up and over another mountain range. This ride is supposed to take about 7 hours. We managed to get up early and take breakfast to go in our fair share mugs, more papaya, oranges and bananas. The hostel arranged a taxi for us. It took about a half hour to get across town to the terminal. Thank fully today is a holiday and there was no traffic. Along the way we saw lots of people out enjoying the bike lanes. Riding (in a car) for so long through the city gives you a whole new perspective on how big it is. 

The terminal was as big as an airport and separated in 5 modules, each one for a different direction of travel. We were able to buy a ticket and board a departing bus immediately. Once we got going, we enjoyed our fruit salad and the empanadas that we bought for the bus ride yesterday. They were really good, filled with potatoes and eggplant.

It wasn’t long before the day became miserable. The roads were windy and narrow and our driver was a maniac whipping around curves and passing in blind curves. He seemed to have no concern for the comfort of anyone else. I don’t usually get motion sick, but I felt lousy all day! Judging by the reactions of those around us, this bus ride was ordinary. 

After several hours coming down from the mountains, we stopped for lunch at a place that every bus seems to stop at. We were only supposed to be there 25 minutes, but it ended up being over an hour and 15 minutes. We were all forced off the bus in the pouring rain to take shelter wherever we could. The restaurant consisted of two large covered patios full of tables, a big grill area where the meals were prepared, and a snack stand. We watched, mesmerized as the grill turned out meal after meal. The servers never stopped running, as bus after bus arrived and departed. I am pretty sure we were there longer than any other bus. The parking lot was really tight for the busses, which had to be backed in by guys holding over sized hands and stops signs that would shout commands at the drivers and wave their signs. It was quite the production. 

The crazy bus parking lot at lunch. Our leftovers of curry rice from the previous night 

Once back on the bus we ate our leftovers, and continued the miserable ride into another mountain range, then down the other side. The scenery was really pretty, steep green mountains covered in tropical trees with vines and lots of coffee and banana farms. The bus ride did end up being just over 7 hour, but not counting the long lunch. 

We got off the bus in the big bus terminal in the capital of the coffee growing region, Armenia, a town of about 300,000. From there we needed one more bus ride, a mini bus, to Salento, an hour away. On the mini bus we ate our delicious veggie tamales from Nativos (in Bogotá). I hope to find more tamales! I think they are one of my favorite foods! Too bad that aren’t easy to make!

We arrived to Salento just before sunset and checked into Coffee Tree Boutique Hostel. The hostel is very new and was built from the ground up over the last several years by a guy, Eddie, that Jeff knows from New Jersey. Jeff doesn’t know him too well, they have mutual friends in common and met each other a few times back in 2010 before they both left New Jersey. Even still it is nice to visit someone you sort of know and have something in common with when so far away from home!

Today is a holiday, so there is a lot of festivity going on in the streets, so we decided to take a little walk before bed. The building here are really pretty. They are all painted in bright colors and have intricate food details on the doors and windows, which is the traditional style for this region. It was too dark for pictures, but I will take some over the next few days.  When we came back Eddie was around, so I got to meet him and his horses and he invited us to go with him to his farm tomorrow (at 6AM!) to move the horses.


  • Tuesday November 14th

We were up bright and early today. Eddies three horses rode in the back of a hired truck, and the three of us led the way in his bright orange 1966 Land Rover. One of Eddie’s employees, Orlando also came along, riding in the truck with the horses. In order to move the horses, a permit was required, but it was time consuming and tedious to obtain and wasn’t received in time, so we took some crazy back roads in this order to bypass police check points. It took an extra hour or so to get there this way, but we got to see all sorts of bumpy back roads, farms and tiny towns. 

Once at the farm, the horses were set free, then we enjoyed a traditional breakfast prepared by the caretakers that watch over the farm. We had scrambled eggs, 3 kinds of bread and rice. Eddie and Orlando then had some chores to take care of and Jeff and I relaxed on the deck and enjoyed the amazing views. It was really nice to just sit, after the long ride yesterday and the early morning today. There were some fruit trees on the property, citrus and guanabana. Orlando got a ladder and climbed the guanabana tree and using a stick knocked the enormous fruits to the ground. He aimed at the tarp that Jeff and I moved around on the ground. We also collected a whole bag full of oranges. Any day that involves the harvesting of fresh produce is a good day in my mind! In the afternoon the caretakers made us lunch. I had salad, French fries and rice. Jeff took a little horse ride with Eddie just before we left.

The view from the farm house.Eddie’s Land Cruiser Me with one of the 8 guanabana fruits that were harvested!Orlando up in the guanabana treeView from the hill above the house.Two of Eddie’s horses. There’s one more, the baby of the white horse, that is not in the picture.Relaxing on the patio. Catching up on blogging. That is something I normal do on the long bus rides between town, but that was not possible on the motion sickness bus! 😝The farm house

Once we left, we were on a mission to find baby chickens for Orlando. He wanted to buy 20 males, and grow them to adulthood to sell for the Christmas holidays. The only problem was that many other people must have had the same idea, because they were no chickens to be bought! We let Orland ride up front with Eddie and we took the back. Eddie opened up all the windows around the back, making it a fun and adventurous ride. We visited several towns and agricultural stores with no luck, but Orlando did get the “chicken fattener” pellets! I hope he gets his chickens soon.

On the way back it started to rain and was getting dark. There is only one tiny windshield wiper on the Land Cruiser and everything was fogging up. We tried to close the rear window flaps, but it’s hard to do from inside, so they were blowing around. We were bouncing around in the back in bags of chicken feeds, fruit and a spare tire. Jeff said it was like Jurassic Park, and I thought it was like the Indian Jones ride at Disney Land! We had fun!


  • Wednesday November 15th

This morning Jeff and I walked an hour outside of town to one of the popular coffee farms to take a tour, Finca El Ocaso. The walk was along a dirt road lined with farms and views of the beautiful foggy mountains. It felt nice to walk somewhere other than the city.

Pancakes! A special treat for breakfast that you don’t see offered too often in hostels. Plus the least gross tasting hostel coffee so far!Cows in the fields on the walk to the coffee farm.

The coffee tour was surprisingly interesting. We first learned about the different varieties of coffee plants and their life cycles. Arabica coffee is the variety grown here, and each plant lives an average of 20 years. Every 5 years the trees are cut back and then left alone to grow back for two years before they begin producing again. The cycle of cutting back the trees can be done twice per plant, then when the tree reaches 20 years, it has reached the end of its fruitful life. We also got to see coffee seedlings and small plants. Colombia is one of the worlds top coffee producers. Here are the top 5:

1. Brazil

2. Vietnam 

3. Colombia 

4. Indonesia

5. Ethiopia 

Traditional farm house at Finca El Ocaso.

We got to attach traditional baskets to our waists and go into the fields and try to pick some ripe coffee berries. Ripe ones can either be yellow or red. Unfortunately they turned us loose in an area that was already picked over by other tourists, and I only found 6 ripe berries! 😫 The fields are really pretty, and consist of not only coffee trees, but other trees of varying heights as well. The other trees are used to shade the coffee, as the best coffee is grown in the shade. Bananas and other fruiting trees are common because they support bird life as well as pollinators. The prettiest tree I saw was a pink banana, called a platanillo. Our guide said it was not an edible variety. Another neat tree they had was a huge coffee tree of the liberica variety. They had this tree just to show what it looks like. It only accounts for 3% of worldwide coffee production. 

Coffee seedlings These young sprouts are called mariposas (butterflies).Our guide Daniel standing next to the huge liberica coffee tree. Much larger than the other coffee trees, which was kept at a height of no taller than 6 feet (so the pickers can easily reach all of the berries).Lovely pink platanillos!

There are two harvests a year, one of which is coming to an end soon. The guys who pick the coffee are paid 600 pesos per kilo and can gather well over 100 kilos per day! That’s a pretty good payment, considering the minimum wage in Colombia is 30,000 pesos (or about 10 US dollars).

After picking the coffee we learned about how it is processed. The pickers bring their baskets full of berries and dump them into a big holding tank. The coffee is then funneled down to machines that peel the skins off. The coffee then goes into big baths full of water to be thoroughly cleaned and to remove the slimy membrane of fruit. The coffee is then left to ferment in the water. When the fermentation is complete, it’s washed again, then put out to dry in the sun or using a fan that is fueled by burning dry coffee skins. Sun drying takes two weeks. The dried beans then have their outer skins removed and are hand sorted for quality. The lowest quality beans are the ones used for the national brands of coffee. These beans must always be dark roasted to hide the imperfections. The quality coffee is reserved mostly for export (60%), but also for the farms own brand that they sell here (40%). 

Traditional machine for removing the skins from the berrieszHolding tanks where the freshly picked berries are placed, under the black tarp.The berries drain from the above tank down into this room and into the newer peeling machines.Coffee is washed and fermented.Thjs is what the dry coffee looks like. The cream colored part in a second layer of skin that gets removed and the remaining green part in called the almendra or almond.Here is a display of coffee in different stages. First is the low grade coffee. Next is the high grade coffee with the peels still on. Then there are the peels and the almonds. The honey coffee is without the fruit membrane washed off. This is supposed to produce a really sweet coffee. I would have liked to try that! The natural is the whole fruit dried without removing either layer of peels. And last is a deformity called peaberry, in which the bean is not split in two, and is supposed to produce a stronger coffee.

At the end we got to sit down for a tasting and learn how to properly brew a cup. The traditional method is it utilize a cheesecloth like filter that hangs over a large pitcher. The water must be heated until bubbles form, but not boiled. The boiling removes too much oxygen and oxygen is needed to react with the coffee. One tablespoon of coffee is used per cup. Each tablespoon contains 50-55 beans. The medium grind medium roast coffee is then placed in the filter bag and a small amount of water is poured over in a circular motion, just enough to fully wet the coffee for a preinfusion. After a minute the rest of the water is poured, also in a circular motion. Once all the water is through the bag, the coffee is ready to be served! Similarly to when we sampled coffee for the first time in Bogotá, it tasted very lemony and tea like to us. Colombian coffee is supposed to be very sweet, with bright citrus notes, and not at all bitter, thanks to the high altitude (6,000 ft in Salento) at which it grows and also thanks to the shade provided by the shade trees. Also while sniffing the coffee we learned that aroma refers to the dry sniffing, and fragrance is the correct word for smelling once the coffee is wet!

There is always a doggie around to play with. His name is Emilio. He’s a funny little smiley dog that likes to play with oranges!

After the tour we walked back at a more leisurely pace. The sun came out for awhile and we got our much needed vitamin d. We haven’t had a cloud free day since we left San Diego on 10/25!!

When we made it back to town we visited a produce shop where I got some fruits and salad ingredients. Our hostel doesn’t have a guest kitchen, but I am always armed with my own set of food prep essentials, so at the very least I can always make a salad. We also went to the grocery store and picked up a few things. Eddie upgraded us to a room with its own bathroom that is quite spacious and includes a table, perfect for preparing meals. We had salad and refried bean and avocado burritos for lunch, then hid out in our room for the rest of the afternoon, while it rained. 

A look up a steep street in town and the traditional architecture.Whole grain bread is not as hard to find as it was in Argentina and Chile where most often you’d find bread with just enough bran added back to give it a speckled look. This bread is pretty decent, but Bimbo is the Latin American equivalent of Wonder Bread! Some of the other options contained enriched white flour with sufficient quantities of bran and germ added back to call it whole grain! Why not just leave the grain whole to begin with??Local honey from bees that pollinated coffee flowers. The flowers only bloom for 3 days, so this is some pretty special honey!Peanut butter and guava jelly sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch. Guave jelly is my favorite! 😍🤗A nice green view from our room.Jeff hiding not want to take part in my photos.Probably one of the nicer rooms we will stay in on our trip.

We ventured out after dark in search of dinner. We ended up at the only vegetarian restaurant in town, Punto Vegetal. Jeff got a veggie burger with fries and I had a salad. We also got some nice orange ginger juice. I decided to eat light for dinner and was really excited about the ginger juice, cause I felt like I was getting sick, but it turns out I’m having some sort of allergies. I guess I’m allergic to something in the air in our hostel room or just in the air of Salento in general. It’s really annoying getting allergies and having no idea why. I never used to have any allergies!! I have a runny nose and uncomfortable watery eyes. I could deal with the nose part, but the eyes are real hard for me. I hope it goes away on its own when we move to a new town, I hate taking pills! 

Surprisingly good salad with roasted broccoli, sprouted lentils, mushrooms, lettuce and and avocado.


  • Thursday November 16th

The biggest reason we came to Salento was to see the Cocora valley. The valley sits at the lower boundary of Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados, a mostly high elevation mountain parks that protects the high peaks. At the lower elevation is the Cocora Valley, home to dense cloud forest and the wax palm. The wax palm is Colombia’s National tree and can grow to heights of almost 200 feet! Unfortunately we are in the mountains during the rainy season, so as I mentioned before, we have yet to see full on sun and blue sky, and there is always this nagging anxiety that the skies will open up at any moment and we’ll get soaked and be miserable the rest of the day. Because it’s been so cloudy and rainy, the high mountains of the park have been getting snow. With the highest peak topping out at over 17,000 feet, it’s sadly not a good time to visit! It is also hard to get to the higher elevation area without a guide.

Cocora luckily can easily be reached without a guide. We took a 30 ride Jeep from the main square in Salento. We were let out by the trail head, at first walking though grassy fields full of cows. We had to pay a 2,000 pesos per person entrance free to pass through the farm. The trail was incredibly muddy and slippery. Here you get a good look at the palms since there is no forest to get in the way, it is certainly a striking view, but it is sad that the land has been altered so much for animal agriculture. We eventually left the fields and entered the cloud forest, going gently up the valley, crossing back and forth over the river on rickety suspension bridges. We followed signs for “Acaime,” a self proclaimed hummingbird house. It cost 5,000 pesos ($1.75) to enter, but it sounded neat, so we decided we’d take the detour from the main loop. It ended up being a little lodge of sorts in the middle of the forest with a bunch of hummingbird feeders full of sugar water hanging from the trees, and a lady in a kitchen ladling our bowls of hot chocolate (in water) or Agua de Panela. Agua de Panela is basically sugar water, Panela being bricks of unrefined sugar. I decided to try that one. It was was way too sweet! The hot drink came with the entrance fee and also included a brick of cheese in it if you wanted! There was also a seating area where we ate the lunch I packed, peanut butter and guava jelly sandwiches and salad with pineapple, kiwi, tomato, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, lettuce and cabbage. The hummingbird house turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, but you never know these things until you go, so we’re glad we went. We got to see a few pretty hummingbirds, but I had hoped for a more natural environment!


Once back on the main trail we climbed in elevation to a farm high up on the mountain side called Finca de la Moñtana. Here you climb out of the cloud forest and the views open up to the valley below. Dense fog rolled in though, it started to rain and we had no view. The trail becomes more of a road in this area so we were able to walk easily with both of us under our rickety umbrella, and managed to stay fairly dry. Not long after it began, the rain stopped, and just in time to see the palms! They were very impressive to see up close. It was hard to stop taking photos! They can reach heights of nearly 200 feet, so it was hard to fit them into one photo!

These vintage Jeeps, called Willys Jeep, are the traditional mode of transportation around here. They were the only kind of taxi we saw around. They are so common that there was a word created to describe a Jeep load, yipao. There are used to haul anything and everything.

We spent 5 hours on the trail. By the time we got back to town we were starving, so we went out to eat at a place called Brunch. It’s rated #1 in town on TripAdvisor and happens to be very vegan and vegetarian friendly. It took me an extremely long time to order because there were too many wonderful choices! They had at least 5 different versions of a black bean veggie burger, a veggie burrito, a vegan quesadilla, a giant salad, breakfast potatoes, fresh juices.... they also make homemade ketchup and BBQ sauce, real fresh potato French fries, freshly ground peanut butter, etc. It’s gringo paradise! I finally settled on the guacamole black bean burger. To make it vegan, they serve it on an arepa which I like even better than a bun! It came with a side salad and I got a juice to go with it. Jeff got the BBQ black bean burger with fries and juice. They also had a peanut butter black bean burger! It was so hard to choose. The food was wonderful, it could just be one of the best of our trip. We left stuffed and dying to go back!


  • Friday November 17th

We had planned to leave Salento after breakfast, but the thought of eating at Brunch was stuck on our minds, so we decided to stay until after lunch!

The entryway to Coffee Tree Boutique Hostel

To kill time we took a walk around town, visiting a view point on a small hill. Once sufficient time had passed since breakfast, we were back at Brunch. Jeff got breakfast potatoes and I had another veggie burger, this time the chili topped version with fries. While we waited for our food, we eyed the table next to us. Two Colombian girls were eating French toast and it came with a big side of the fresh peanut butter. Being Colombian and being of the firm belief that peanut butter is disgusting, they didn’t touch it! We were on it the moment they left, haha! Our food was once again delicious and kept us super full for many hours.

5 Bean chili with caramelized onions and mushrooms on an arepa with homemade ketchup and mango juice! 😋

Leaving Salento we had to take two bus rides of 1 1/4 hours each to reach the next town, Manizales. This is another town in the coffee growing region. There isn’t much to see here, but we wanted to break up the ride to Medellín, the next big city. 

We are never far from happy sleepy dogs. This one was sitting under my bench at the bus stop in Salento.

When we arrived to the terminal here in town, we got right on to a ski resort style cable car! The town is hilly, so cable cars make sense! It was about a 10 minute ride to the area of town where our hostel is located. We were able to easily follow the directions listed on HostelWorld. Hostelworld is the website/app we use to research and book all of our hostels.


From the cable car we were deposited on to a busy pedestrian street. It’s been a little while since we’ve seen so many people and so much street action. Having been deprived of an abundance of street vendors while in Salento, I perked right up and began surveying the options on the walk to our hostel. 


We are staying at the Golden Frog Mountain Hostel. It’s located on the 3rd floor of a little strip mall, in a busy shopping area. Inside the hostel is decorated in the same traditional way the houses in Salento were, with colorful doors a precision paint jobs. It’s a really nice place!

The view from the 3rd floor.

It was a little after 4 when we were all checked in and we went back out to the streets to enjoy the festival like atmosphere of the pedestrian street. It took a lot of will power not the buy more, but I settled on some dragonfruits and cloudberries from the street vendors. There were small heirloom potatoes, and I L😍VE potatoes, especially varieties that are new to me. There were also huge mangos, papayas and avocados, more things I love. We also visited the grocery store where I bought a couple of plantains and some hot chocolate bars. It has been too many days without plantains! I don’t do so well without access to a kitchen. I am glad to have one again at this hostel, and it’s a good one too. I have only been in two big grocery stores so far, the one in Bogotá and now here, so it was fun to walk around and look at everything.

White chocolate dipped Oreos, my arch nemesis! We’ll see how long I hold out!These are bricks of “panela,” basically brown sugar. It is what the sugar water drink is made from, it’s also used to make chicha and other fermented drinks, and countless other things!Milk comes in shelf stable bags here. It is strange to see in bundled up in bags of 6 here and thrown in a crate near the check out. The bakery next door. We didn’t see any bakeries where we were staying in Bogotá, but since leaving there, we’ve seen an abundance of bakeries.Peanut butter does exist! I want the squeezy pack!

Back at the hostel we had a dinner of fruit, hot chocolate in water (it’s surprisingly good!!), plantains and fresh bread from a bakery next door. It was almost like a typical Colombia dinner (minus cheese)!

Cloudberries are the newest superfood in the US. They are becoming common in dry form. It’s neat to be able to have them fresh down here. They taste similar to kiwi. They are also known as cape gooseberries, but are not true gooseberries. They are related to tomatillos and come wrapped in the and kind of papery skin.

I suffered from mystery allergies 3 out of the 4 days were were in Salento. I am hoping that whatever was offending me is now absent in this new town. I was feeling desperate and tried to buy Benadryl, so I could take just one, and the people at the pharmacy told me that I probably wouldn’t find it anywhere in Colombia! At least I think that’s what they told me, haha! I don’t always understand 100%!

Here’s what a nice kitchen looks like. There’s lots of room, two sets of burners and ample dishes, utensils and cookware. There’s also a blender, which we’ve had at every hostel in Colombia, but is rare elsewhere. This hostel also has a waffle iron! Ovens are rare. Microwaves have been at every hostel so far, except this one, but they are rare everywhere else we have been.This is the special hot chocolate pitcher and stirring stick. So far every hostel has had one. The chocolate comes in many different varieties with many brands to choose from. They have good simple ingredients. We chose the cinnamon clove flavor.This is the common style of dish soup, a cream that comes in a tub. I like it, but it seems to run out fast.Here’s a look at some Colombian money. Each denomination comes in several different patterns and all of the bills are about the same size. The coins are also all different sizes and colors. There can be 3 different patterns and sizes for the same coin. It’s hard to quickly identify what you have when paying!


  • Saturday November 18th


Breakfast at our hostel is traditional Colombian and consisted of a slice of farm fresh cheese, a sausage/hot dog, eggs and bread with jam. We did not eat any of it. (I made peanut butter and guava jelly sandwiches instead). The breakfast was prepared and plated up by a lady who is hired specifically to do breakfast. This is common in a lot of hostels. We prefer the breakfasts that are self serve, because they tend to be more vegan friendly (since nothing requires cooking) and also because you get to eat as much as you want. The front desk girl felt really bad for us and told us she would make sure we had something to eat in the breakfast the next day. 

The main reason most backpackers go to Manizales is to visit Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados. This is a high mountain park consisting of multiple peaks over 17,000 feet, some volcanos and unique high elevation plains vegetation. Unfortunately since it’s the rainy season, it’s cold and snowy up there. There are many tours operators in Manizales that do day trips and even backpacking trips in the park. We were kind of holding out hope that we might finally get a clear day and get to go to the mountains. We really don’t like taking tours, but unfortunately most of the nature in Colombia is hard to get to without a car. We are feeling deprived of nature and sick of cities. We were pretty sure that a tour to the mountains right now would cold cold and crappy with little to no visibility, and our suspicions were confirmed this morning by a Dutch traveler who took a tour yesterday. It is freezing and miserable up there, and although we are sad not to get to see it, we don’t think it’s worth trying.

After a few hours of being lazy and failing to be motivated to leave the hostel, we went out for a walk. The street that was a pedestrian street yesterday is no longer a pedestrian street today. There wasn’t much for us to do in town. We tried going up the tower of the big cathedral in town, but they appeared to be having some sort of church service, and we didn’t want to interrupt. We then walked up a small hill to the high point in town. There is an ugly futuristic tower there that you can pay to go up in for a better view, but it appeared to be closed and although the street was full of touristic restaurants and ladies selling ice cream and obleas, there was no one around. It was really strange. 

We see carts like this selling all sorts of produce, some of them even have steering wheels. It is hard for me to resist buying everything!The cathedral and a statue of Simón Bolivar depicted as half man half condor. The highest tower of the church is the one you can climb. It is supposed to be the tallest church tower in Colombia at 106 meters (340 feet).another pretty church, this one was decorated entirely out of ornate wood inside. The tower view point that was oddly deserted.view from the high point above towna monument at the high point to the pioneering settlers of the coffee region. Cloudy view. When it’s clear you can see the high peaks!Some fun cakes in the bakery next door to our hostel.

Yesterday when we were walking around, we discovered a new street food. For 1800 pesos (60¢) you can have a deep fried bread stick that is filled with delicious guava jelly and a small amount of cheese. Cheese and guava are a very popular combination. Anyway the thing was so incredibly delicious 🤤 and addictive! We could have eaten 10 of them. We walked by the seller again today and couldn’t resist. They have two sizes, large and small. Yesterday we shared small one, but today we each went for a big one! Unfortunately it was mostly cheese and very little guava. The small one was better. It made us incredibly full for hours.


Because of our lack of a healthful meal today and for lack of anything else to do, we bought groceries and cooked food in the hostel. We had salad, avocado, plantains, arepas and mashed baby heirloom potatoes. I never tire of these traditional foods. I crave them all the time and could eat them every day. I also made beans, we found fresh ones in the store. I thought they would cook faster, but we are at 7,000 feet, and they did not, so they will be saved for breakfast.



  • Sunday November 19th

When we went to the kitchen this morning to get breakfast, the cooker lady was very confused by us and didn’t know what vegan meant. Although we haven’t been eating 100% vegan, I’d prefer to. The front desk girl told me they were going to make us fruits and avocado and tomatoes and arepas. But the front desk girl wasn’t there yet, and the kitchen lady gave us an arepa and some croissant like things. Luckily I had nice beans to go with it.

Later the front desk girl came to find me and said the kitchen lady forgot about about breakfast and she was so sorry! She gave me the avocados we were supposed to have eaten and offered to buy us fruit. We told her not to worry about it. It was so nice that she tried!

We managed to leave the hostel at a reasonable hour to walk back to the cable car for the ride to the bus terminal. We had envisioned riding a motor coach bus, but once we got to the terminal it appeared that sprinter vans and small buses were the only option. We spent the next 5+ hours in misery again. Narrow, curvy roads, rain, fog, clouds, the driver on and off the gas constantly trying to pass other vehicles. 

In the first couple of hours, we must have stopped for at least a dozen construction stops. Even if we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, guys selling food would appear. Traditional cornstarch and cheese crackers called rosquillas were available, as well as guys with baskets full of cut fruits, there were pound cakes covered in guava jelly and also arepas. It’s common for bus drivers to pick up the sellers of food and transport them down the road, where they will board a bus going the other direction. They don’t appear to have to pay for this. At one of the stops, a guy with a big basket of arepas got in our van and started passing the arepas around for everyone to feel how warm they still were. We were in the back, and got skipped. These were the biggest most beautiful arepas I’d ever seen! Arepas come in many varieties with many different methods of preparation. These were called arepas de chocolo, which is a fresh corn arepa. They are made by blending fresh raw corn into an liquidy batter. The batter is then fried on a griddle or grill to make a thick pancake type cake. They are very sweet since they are made of sweet corn. We’d just finished having salad and peanut butter banana and avocado wraps, so we really didn’t need one, and I often lack the assertiveness to speak up, especially when it means raising voice to be heard, so we missed out. A guy selling fruit walked by during this time and we decided to buy a big chunk of papaya from him, so he stepped into the van crammed in next to the arepa man. At that moment the traffic released and our driver floored it. People don’t patiently wait for the cars in front of them to go, they race past one another to be the first back on the road. It’s really strange. So we’re racing to pass all the other cars, and the door is open and the arepa guy is inside and the fruit guy is inside and we reach the front of the traffic break, where the flagger is standing and the two vendors have to literally jump out! 😂

Our van full of food vendors.

We stopped once halfway to Medellín for our driver to eat lunch. Then it was back to the illness inducing ride. We got into Medellín a little before dark and took the second taxi ride to our. We usually prefer to walk, but since we haven’t been here before, and it’s Colombia’s 2nd largest city, we didn’t know how safe it was and it would have gotten dark before we got there if we’d walked.

Lots of typical foods for sale at our lunch stop. Pastries, white flour, fried things and cheese seem to be a common element in snack and meals times.

We chose Hostal Casa Paraiso because it’s located in a residential neighborhood, and it’s not a party hostel. After checking in we walked to the grocery store. The biggest grocery store we have ever seen. It had its own food court and a movie theater too! It was rather overwhelming and hard to choose what to buy! We found natural skippy and just had to buy some! There were all sorts of other imported delights to look at, so we spent a good chunk of time walking around. Having not been able to get arepas de chocolo off my mind, we decided to buy a packaged store version of those and some fruits to have for dinner. The arepas were pretty good, they taste kind of like sweet corn bread, but the packaged ones are nowhere near as good as the homemade ones! 

it’s hard to tell in the photos, but this store was truly massive!they had pink skinned pineapples!and a few kinds of avocados. The larger ones are the more traditional type.We got a Colombiana soda to try. It’s called “kola,” but does not actually taste like cola. It’s tastes like bubblegum! 😝











4 comments:

  1. Sounds amazing and very tiring at the same time. Your food always makes me hungry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay, so my original comment here has flown off into space somewhere I guess. I was commenting that Sherry is now enjoying your blog, along with me. I read her the commentary and show her the pictures, as she sits next to me and knits. She really enjoys your photographic eye and your narrative descriptions, which she says really paint a vivid picture of where you are and what you are doing (which she can hardly believe you are doing). Such an adventure.
    I also commented that the weird tower you encountered looks a lot like one of those television towers they built back in the 1970s and 1980s to give people a clear signal to their home TV antennas. They are all over Europe. Most are abandoned or shut now, as cable and satellite and the internet have made them useless. Some of the really huge ones survive as observation decks, radio stations, panoramic restaurants or function rooms for weddings, etc. Or maybe it is not one of those...just another roadside attraction, as they say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am glad you are both enjoying it! Perhaps that is exactly what the tower was meant for, it would make sense!

      Delete

•Costa Rica: Arenal and Monteverde 02/18-02/25

Sunday February 18th This morning we overheard Crazy Mary’s unfortunate victims at the breakfast table tell her that the subject matter wa...