Blogs from Antioquia, Colombia, South America - page 4

Colombian food Cousin Steve Engel asks about the food in Colombia. Here in Medellín we have been well fed, because our little neighborhood is full of small foreign restaurants: Italian, Israeli, French, Indian, Mexican, American, etc. None is bad; some are really good. The best ones have free valet parking and a clientele that drives in from other parts of the city. Generally, Colombian food derives from Spanish food, not Mexican; i.e., it never has chili in it. There is one Colombian restaurant that we have been to a few times, called Tres Tipicos, for the three native concoctions that they serve. The one I like best is a long-cooked tripe stew called Mondongo, similar to a Mexican menudo, always served in Mexico with tortillas, lime slices, chopped onion, dry hot chili, and dried Mexican oregano. ... read more

Rio La Vieja, and Mangosteens We are just back from a rafting expedition here in the Zona Cafetera. This region is known for its coffee, but there are other crops grown here, very tall wax palms and also a lot of bananas, and many unfamiliar fruits such as mangosteens. All the bananas grow inside blue plastic bags, an incredible miracle of modern genetic engineering. But bananas are not a Big Ag monopoly, as in Guatemala. Nearly every farm that grows coffee also grows bananas; it's something about how the the coffee year and the banana year fit together. The banana groves are not as monoculturally intense here as the Dole and Chiquita groves we saw in Guatemala. When Guatemala falls prey to some banana disease that wipes it all out, maybe Colombia will still have bananas. ... read more

The Cafetera region The heart of the coffee country is in the foothills of the Cordillera Central. Leaving Medellín heading south we climbed steadily for about an hour, the vegetation changing constantly with altitude. It was all very tropical and lush, but there were subtle changes. The roadside fruit stands started displaying fat bunches of bright red berries called corsos, but we did not stop to try any. Maybe on the way back. About noon, we reached the top of the Cordillera Central at a little place called La Pintada, at about 8000 feet, and we stopped for lunch. Beyond La Pintada the road followed the crest of the Cordillera for about 50 miles, with fantastically steep scenery on both sides of the road. We passed through two linear villages, where there was room beside the ... read more

The other reason we went to see Hacienda Nápoles is the private menagerie that Escobar built for his children. These words may call up in your mind a small thing that you could walk through in an hour or so. This is far from the case. The menagerie covers most of the 7600 acres of the estate, with a road that winds from exhibit to exhibit (photo 70) , some of which are truly enormous habitats where the animals live almost as they would in the wild. The tiger habitat covers many acres, with both forest and grassland, bounded by a good tall fence. It started with two tigers, but by now there are many. They are hard to see in the daytime (we saw nothing) but at night they go on the prowl for goats ... read more

Geo: 6.23593, -75.5751Walking through Botero plaza makes a person of almost any size feel skinny. Fernando Botero, born in Medellín, has donated hundreds of his statues to museums in Colombia, including Medellín and Bogotá. ... read more