Colombia Day 4

Our plan for today was to take a Fruit tour at the local market. thetwinsontour love local fruits and trying different fruits that you can’t buy in Kansas. We decided to just take a taxi to the meeting point rather than walking half an hour to the metro stop, taking the metro 6 stops, and then having to transfer to the metro plus bus. We were supposed to meet a little before 9:45. Remembering back to our 50 minute taxi ride in Bogota, and how we barely arrived in time, someone amongst us decided we should take no chances with traffic this time around. Yes, you guessed it. We left our hotel at 8:15 in our little yellow taxi cab. And we arrived at our destination at 8:28.   For a 9:45 tour. Well, at least we knew we wouldn’t be late. We wandered down the road a bit and spotted a local cafe/restaurant/bakery type place with lots of bright orange plastic chairs and customers. It looked promising. So we walked up to the counter and stared at the menu-less walls. Yeah. Nothing there. So I did what I always do. I pointed at this girl’s drink and said “what’s that?”  Milo caliente. Perfect! Dos Milos Calientes por favor. In case you are worried about what thetwinsontour are imbibing at 8:33 in the morning, Milo is their brand of hot chocolate, like Nesquick. We sat and sipped our hot chocolate for a full 48 minutes. Of course, after 42 minutes it wasn’t really hot anymore, but we were trying to kill time. A lot of it. 

We learned a lot about fruit, most of which i have already forgotten.  We only ate stuff that is grown in Colombia, so no pink dragon fruit from Ecuador. We ate the yellow kind from Colombia, which may be the most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life.  Alas, it is not recommended to eat more than 2 a week because they have a laxative effect. We learned that the best way to eat Passion fruit and Guava is to just swallow the seeds.  Don’t chew them.  I never really cared for Passion fruit before, but it is much more enjoyable that way. 

Actually my other favorite fruit of the day was a member of the Passion fruit family: the sweet granadilla.  It is actually a favorite of Colombian school children too because of the fun way you eat it.  It’s got a hard exterior which you have to crack open.  You could hit it against the table, or preferably against someone’s head.  Then you peel off about 2/3 of that shell, and you are left with what looks like the thick skin of a  naval orange. You poke a hole in the top of that and the squeeze the fruit out from the bottom, or if you are really boring you can scoop it with a spoon.  It is both delicious and entertaining to eat.   

The other interesting thing is the giant corn. We didn’t eat it, but we watched them processing it by hand.  Our guide was quite amused that we all wanted to take our picture with a giant ear of corn. It was like Blue Ribbon at the State Fair sized corn. They shuck the corn and save all of the pieces.  The husks are fed to cows, the silk is boiled into a tea for upset stomachs, and they save the cobs for the pigs. 

The market is very safe and all of the vendors are very friendly, but they hadn’t always been the case.  Mother, don’t read this part.  A lot of locals won’t go here, and some taxi drivers won’t take tourists there because of its shady past.   Back in the drug cartel days, there were a lot of murders in the market. There are lots of small aisles and corners so it would be easy to discreetly commit murder there.  

After the tour, our guide made sure that we all knew how to get to our next destination. We decided that we wanted to go to Botero Plaza to see all of the statues by the Colombian Artist Botero.  We had read mixed reviews about it. Our hotel concierge said that it was very safe during the day, but that we shouldn’t go after 5pm.  So to get there from the market, we had the option to take a bus and a metro, or to walk 25 minutes on just 2 streets to get there.  We opted to walk, so that we could see more of the city. We definitely saw more of the city than we had intended. It was a nice little walk down a residential pedestrian area with trees and furniture stores and a college with lots of students. Mom, you should probably skip over the rest of this paragraph as well.    As we got closer to downtown, there were more people everywhere with several scantily-clad women standing on each street corner. Then right in front of the church, we saw a larger woman walking on the street wearing nothing but panties and a negligee. We just kept walking a little faster. 

Our destination was the sculpture park which is in a giant plaza surrounding the cathedral. It is chock full of Botero sculptures, tourists, hawkers, vendors, homeless people, and more ladies of the night. thetwinsontour let none of this dissuade them from their task at hand–to take a selfie in front of each of the 23 Botero statues. Taking a selfie is obligatory. And this is not some archaic, obscure rule. You look at these statues of voluminous proportions, and they practically scream at you “selfie, selfie, selfie!”  And who are thetwinsontour to deny the pleas of the statues?  

We decided to break up the selfie-palooza and get away from the scorching sun by visiting the Museo de Antioquia, which is an art museum with a bazillion Botero paintings as well as some other Colombian artists and one Picasso drawing. It was a nice respite from the hooligans in the plaza and the blazing sun. Plus, there are bathrooms in the museum! Very exciting. The guards in the museum were very intent on us seeing everything and in the proper order. They kept pointing us in the correct direction and telling us to read things. They were either very friendly or bored out of their minds. 

Anyways, after the museum we went back out to a sun that was a little less ferocious and took more Botero selfies. It was great. We just blithely went around snapping pics, and no one tried to rob us or pick our pockets. They just tried to sell us colombian hats that won’t stay on our big heads. 12 times. There are a lot of hat vendors in the plaza.

By this time it was 4:30, and remembering the words of our hotel concierge– that we shouldn’t be there after 5pm, we decided to get the hell out of Dodge. We quickly hopped on the metro to head back towards our hotel. 

That is all of the excitement for the day. Toodles!

thetwinsontour