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In the seven weeks we've spent in Colombia - on its idyllic beaches, in its cloud-shrouded forests and on its nutty buses - we've both fallen in love with this beautiful, raucous, colourful, overwhelmingly welcoming country. It's extraordinary to think that barely a couple of decades ago, many Colombians were effective prisoners in their cities and towns, unable to venture out into their own country, gripped as it was by violent guerilla warfare, drug murders and kidnapping - it makes the heart-warming welcome you receive as a foreigner in Colombia all the more touching. As with any country, of course, Colombia certainly has its fair share of quirks...
Fruit v. Stodge - who will win? It would be a fib to say that South America provides the kind of refined culinary wonders you might get, say, in Southeast Asia. Argentines seem allergic to vegetables, and most Chileans think black pepper is far too adventurous and exotic. In Colombia, the situation is a bit more nuanced.
On one hand, there are the fruit. Heavens above, the fruit! From our first day in Colombia to the last, I don't think we went more than 24 hours without gorging ourselves on
A Colombian cornucopia
From the top, clockwise: maracuyá, tomate de árbol, mangostino, lulo, granadilla.the utterly extraordinary range of weird and wonderful fruit on offer here. Much fruit is consumed in the form of
jugos naturales, or fresh juices. It seems almost impossible to walk any distance in a Colombian city or town without being tempted by the offer of a fresh fruit juice. Any request for a juice will be met with a formidable list of fruit to choose from, usually recited at great speed and without hesitation:
"tenemos...lulo, maracuyá, borojo, mora, guanábana, tomate de árbol, guayaba, tamarindo, piña, níspero, sapote, papaya, curuba, carambola..." is a typical response, and leaves out such dull flavours as orange or strawberry which are invariably also available. Most juices can be made in either water or milk, although only a fool would dream of ordering a
guanábana juice in water, or pineapple in milk. A fair number of the fruit to be seen in Colombia -
curuba and
lulo to name only two
- we had never seen nor heard of before. Describing all of Colombia's amazing fruit would take far too long - Wikipedia might be useful if you're curious! - but an exception must be made for the
lulo, possibly Colombia's most popular and unique
Tomate de árbol
A tree tomato, also called a tamarillo in New Zealand. fruit. The lulo is a type of nightshade,
Solanum quitoense, making it a distant relative of tomatoes, potatos and aubergines. It is grown almost exclusively in Colombia and Ecuador, where it is more commonly called a
naranjilla despite having nothing to do with an orange. The plant grows at altitude, producing a crop of extremely furry fruit - the fur being highly irritating to the skin - which turn from green to orange when ripe. Cut in half, a lulo looks a little like a orange-and-green tomato, but there any resemblance ends. The flavour of a lulo is hard to describe, but to us it is the Marmite of fruit: Alex hates it, I love it. Lime cordial mixed with bubble-gum is as close to a true description as I can come up with, while to Alex the lulo tastes of petrol and nail-varnish remover. Eaten on its own a lulo is a bit too much even for me, but as a juice it's heavenly. On the assumption that I might never get to taste it again, I partook with great frequency. Alex's favourites were the
mora, a type of blackberry quite different from the European variety, and above all
Lulo
A fruit unique to Colombia and Ecuador, where it's usually called a naranjilla. the
uchuva (known in the UK as cape gooseberries or physalis) and purchased in giant bags for next to nothing.
Fresh fruit juice being so fundamental to the lives of most Colombians - most of whom, I'd guess, wouldn't dream of buying it in cartons - the juice blender, or
licuadora, is a vital piece of kit here. Even the most poorly equipped of hostel kitchens - the ones with a single handle-less saucepan and no forks - often had a
licuadora in the back of a cupboard. In most cities there are huge shops -
licuacentros - devoted solely to blenders, stocking a huge range of models and offering servicing, part replacements and repairs. Proper juice stalls might have a dozen
licuadoras lined up, one for each type of fruit juice on offer. In goes a big wodge of fruit pulp, a bag of treated water (in Colombia, thankfully, there's no need to worry about dodgy tap water being used) and, unless you're quick off the mark and ask for
menos azúcar, a huge quantity of sugar...
To say that Colombians have a sweet tooth would be something of an understatement. Perhaps, being producers of vast quantities
Granadilla
One of three types of passion-fruit available in Colombia, with the maracuyá and the curuba. of
panela - the local unrefined cane sugar - Colombians feel that adding diabetes-inducing quantities of sugar to almost everything is a show of support for the
panela industry. Coffee, yoghurt, juice, even powdered milk in supermarkets - everything seems pre-sweetened. In seven weeks, despite valiant efforts, I did not once find a pot of unsweetened yoghurt anywhere in Colombia. When you're at least
trying to eat healthily, it was most frustrating to be so comprehensively thwarted at every turn. Not that eating healthily in Colombia is a simple proposition: it's not. Colombia is an Atkins dieter's worst nightmare made reality - avoiding carbs here is like avoiding steak in Argentina or rice in Japan. You just can't reasonably do it.
Take the
comidas corrientes, for instance. These set menus are to be found all over the country for a few thousand pesos and usually include a soup, a drink (
jugo, of course) a piece of grilled chicken, beef or pork and up to a sextuple-whammy of starch. One particularly carb-heavy
comida saw us being presented with rice
and beans
and potato
and fried plantain
and fried cassava
and griddled maize cakes (the last three -
patacón,
yuca and
Maracuyá
One of three types of passion-fruit available in Colombia, with the granadilla and the curuba. arepa - being typically Colombian). Phew! It's all invariably tasty - if a little same-same - but hardly what I'd call light food. Colombia, at times, seemed to be doing its level best to turn us both into lard-butts. Thankfully, our unbridled fruit consumption appears to have karmically balanced out these astronomical quantities of stodge.
Most of our clothes still fit.
Minutes for sale On our very first wander around Medellín we noticed the word
minutos everywhere. On colourful signs hanging from shop fronts, scrawled on a piece of card poked between the bananas of a fruit seller's stall, written across the backs of the fluorescent yellow and green jackets of men an women all over town. What's going on?
We quickly found out that the minutes on sale are minutes of mobile phone time. While seemingly every Colombian - from the fashionable yuppies of Bogotá to elderly ladies in highland villages - has a fancy mobile phone (usually with a loud, conspicuous and irritating ringtone - many Colombians have the incredibly irritating habit of letting their phones ring for ages on the bus before
finally deigning to answer it), most do not use it to make
Mangostino
Not officially Colombian - it's native to Asia - but still occasionally available, and delicious! any calls. Huh? It turns out that calls between the several networks active in Colombia are very expensive -
minutos sellers buy call time in bulk and resell it, presumably at a tiny profit, to customers. Sellers will often have multiple phones on them - one or more for every network - often secured to their jackets or little stall with string. One particular
minutos man I spotted in Cartagena had cleverly set up an umbrella with no fewer than twelve phones connected to its ribs with long chains. It's a common sight in Colombian cities to see a crowd of people, phones stuck to their ears, huddled around a man in a bright yellow jacket with bits of string radiating out from his pockets. Bizarre. The
minutos industry may not seem like much, but from what we've seen it's the livelihood of thousands upon thousands of Colombians.
God Bless This Bus One of the nice things about visiting a country with relatively low car ownership is that getting from one place to another - however far-flung - is usually a doddle. Public transport is the norm in Colombia rather than the exception, even in the most rural
of locations.
Unlike in Argentina where bus travel is dominated by a few big firms, in Colombia a huge number of small transport companies provide a comprehensive network along which a bewildering selection of vehicles - buses, minibuses, microbuses,
chivas (quintessentially Colombian open-sided trucks used in rural areas, similar to a Philippine
jeepney), pickup trucks, jeeps and even family cars - run. Wherever you are, it's unlikely you'll ever be stuck for more than a few minutes before something with four wheels pulls over to pick you up.
Regardless of the type of vehicle you're in - from the cryogenically-cooled overnight intercity service to the battered old pickup truck bumping along a dirt road - one thing never changes: the driver will believe himself to be immortal, immune to such a trivial thing as death. Indeed, there can be no other explanation for the sheer recklessness of Colombian bus drivers' behaviour behind the wheel. The overtaking on blind bends, the grossly excessive speed, the demented swerving and sudden braking. It's a miracle neither of us ever needed the sick-bags available on most buses ("if you feel sick, simply ask for a bag", a polite notice always states). A
quick glance at any bus explains things: divine protection. Life-size stickers of Jesus on the automatic doors, rosaries hanging from the rear view mirror (assuming the bus has a rear view mirror), "God Bless This Bus" emblazoned on the back of the vehicle in great letters (a bit like the "Mind That Child" on an ice-cream van). This protection is clearly of dubious reliability: ticket offices all over the country are required by law to display their injury and fatality statistics in the window, ostensibly to help you choose which bus you want to take! Talk about inspiring confidence...
After seven weeks riding buses of all shapes and sizes we've been loaded into pickups with fighting cockerels, navigated around landslides and even had to get off and walk for a short stretch as the bus driver was concerned the vehicle might tip over into a particularly cavernous pothole. Colombian bus travel is many things - boring is not one of them.
"I'd like the little big one, please." Just like most of their fellow Latin Americans, Colombians are very big on social niceties. Nobody would dream of asking for directions of a stranger without a polite "
buenos Curuba
One of three types of passion-fruit available in Colombia, with the granadilla and the maracuyá. días, señora" or "
buenas tardes, señor" being exchanged. It's all very refined, being called
caballero or
mi hijo by everybody. Even the very smallest "thank you" will be returned with a delightfully Colombian "
con mucho gusto". When leaving someone, even someone you've met five minutes previously, a warm "
que les vaya muy bien" ("may things go well for you both") or "
feliz viaje" is always offered. Shopkeeper greet you with a friendly "
a la orden" - "at your service". It's just lovely.
Colombians speak a lovely Spanish far removed from the mumbled, half-swallowed, slang-laden laden language we had to deal with in Chile. Colombian Spanish has, as did its Argentine, Uruguayan and Chilean cousins, its fair share of idiosyncrasies. As ever, one has to be prepared for everyday items changing names suddenly as you cross the border. Avocados, which we've been referring to as
paltas for the past six months, have become
aguacates. Strawberries are still
fresas, not
frutillas as in Argentina. Our favourite sweet treat, soft milk caramel, is not
dulce de leche or
manjar or
manjarblanco as it is in Argentina, Chile and Peru respectively. Here it is
arequipe. A plastic shopping bag isn't a
bolsa any
Feijoa
Also widely cultivated in New Zealand. more but a
chuspa. Something really great is
"Chévere!" - in Chile it was
"Bacán!". Colombian vendors will call out to their female customers with "
mamita!". Perhaps one of the funniest features of Colombian Spanish is its obsession with diminutives: in an attempt to get you to buy their wares vendors will offer you not an "
agua helada a 1,000 pesos" but an "
aguita heladita a mil pesitos". Almost everything is miniaturised:
juguitos, gaseositas, buñuelitos, papitas. If asked to wait a moment you'll be asked to wait not for a
rato but a
ratico. Strangely, even the word for "large" gets the diminutive treatment, and within a couple of weeks even I was pointing out a large bottle of water to the shopkeeper as
la grandecita - the "little big one".
It's a little-known fact that Colombian women are among the world's most enthusiastic consumers of plastic surgery. Boob, bum and nose jobs are apparently carried out on an industrial scale here. Combine this with a penchant for
very skimpy clothing and it can at times take some effort to remember you're in a supposedly devout Catholic country... As for Colombian men, they've rewarded us with some of the
Starch alert, part one
Breakfast on our horseride to the source of the Magdalena: soup, fried dough, rice, patacón (crispy fried plantain) and trout caught the evening before. most spectacular mullets we've ever seen. After three months in Argentina, this is saying something.
What every Colombian we've had the pleasure of meeting has in common, however, is the most delightful openness, hospitality and warmth. Wherever you go in Colombia, you really are made to feel at home.
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JayExiomo
Jay Exiomo
Nice
Love the contrast between the fruit and the blue background