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

Colombia Day 3

Today we left Bogota for Medellin. We left our hotel at 8am for our 10:33am flight.  There are flights like every half hour to Medellin. Seriously, the boarding announcements got a little confusing because the gate next to ours was a 10:30 flight to Medellin on another airline. You actually had to pay attention to what they were saying.  The flight was super short.  We made it to altitude, they made an announcement that you could buy snacks, and then less than 5 minutes later they were saying to return your seats to the upright position because we would be landing shortly.  

So since we are on our own for this trip, we have nothing planned. We had no idea what we wanted to do, or where to go. We got to the hotel about 12:30 and tried to research something to do.  We gave up and asked the concierge what we should do.  He suggested the cable cars, so that is what we did.  After a quick lunch, we headed to the metro station. We walked, and then we walked some more. We walked so far that we thought we had missed it.  We asked a lady who told us it was down the street and to the left. Just follow the people she said.  So we followed people to a little shortcut through the grass.  Then we followed people through several areas that look like they should be metro stations, but they weren’t. We just kept following people. But how do you know when you are following the right people? So we asked again, and we still had a ways to go.  It was a long, hot walk to the metro station and it seemed like forever. Luckily, it was mostly downhill.   

The metro is not a subway. It is all above ground. The part we rode seemed to run the length of the city. It was about half an hour until we got to our stop. Riding the Metro is one of the top 5 attractions on Tripadvisor. Shows you that reviews cannot always be trusted. Unless it is my review of course. Anyways, you can actually see a lot of the city from the metro simply because it is above ground. That is if you aren’t blinded by the sun or jamb-packed like sardines. Anyways, we rode the metro so I am checking it off my list. We were riding the Metro to get to the Metrocable–a cable car that goes up the side of the mountain where all of the poor people with tin roofs live. It was pretty neat view, going up over the houses except we were sandwiched in between the locals who were using it for transportation and not touristic purposes. This cable car goes forever and actually has 3 different stops. The fantastic part is that it was included as a transfer with my metro ticket!!!  When you get to the end of the metro cable, all the locals disappear. And all of the tourists walk over to the adjacent station and hop onto a second cable car. We did have to pay extra for this, as it is not part of the metro system. This cable car goes forever.  We were there just happily snapping pictures of the view. First of the roofs of the houses at the top of the city, then some small farmland, then we reached the top of the mountain and it just kept going and going through the forest of super tall trees.  I thought we were just going to the top of the mountain for a nice view of the city below, but that is not where it goes.  It just keeps going until you finally make it to a national park. There are supposed to be some walking trails, but I don’t know where they were.  We weren’t going to hike anyways because it was already after 5pm.  So we just wandered there at the welcome center a bit, and bought our tickets to go back down.  This time we had a car all to ourselves, so we were able to take lots and lots of selfies. We made sure to pay attention to the time, and it was exactly 20 minutes. It’s a real good thing I got over that fear of cable cars I had when I was 8.   

Our morning taxi driver had told us her favorite Colombian restaurant chains.  One of them was a hamburger place called Corral. When we saw that at the mall food court, we decided that was ok to try since a real Colombian had recommended it.  But we got the least American burger on the menu. It was topped with dried plantain chips, a type of cream cheese called suero, and some shredded cheese.  It was delicious! I am going to have to be brave and make a trip to Trader Joe’s when I get home for some plantain chips.  Unless I have room in my suitcase…What a great plan. Seriously, you should all try some crunchy plantain chips on your next burger.  Also I upgraded the fries to yucca fries which was hands down the best yucca I have ever eaten.  Oh, and I got a Colombian brand of pop for my drink. It was apple flavored and is a new favorite.  

Don’t forget to likethetwinsontour on Facebook.  Also, you probably noticed that we changed blog sights. Try to subscribe so that you get notifications. I am still trying to figure out if I can email them myself.  

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 2, free walking tours 

We started the morning with a super long taxi ride to the city center. Not good hotel planning on our part, but I blame my sister for that.  It is a 32 minute taxi ride with no traffic, but at that time of day it is over 50 minutes, so we barely made it to our free walking tour in time. Luckily, taxi rides are fairly inexpensive so it only cost us $26,000 (about $8.68) and a lot of worries to get there.  Thetwinsontour do not like to be late, nor do they like to miss out on free tours.  

We chose to go on the Spanish tour rather than the English tour because it was a much smaller group (6 people instead of 30), but boy did that put my Spanish to the test. Our guide talked so fast! I understood what she was saying, but there were a few times I had no idea what she was talking about.  But maybe I would have been confused in English too because she was talking about politics, and leftists, and assassinations. All in all, I would say my comprehension level was about 90-95% (Mom, all that money you spent on my college education was worth it.)

They call it a free walking tour, but of course tips are much appreciated. I think their website says the average tip is $5-10, but at the end of the tour they leave off the $5 part. But $10 for a three hour tour of any kind is pretty good.  I challenge you to find a better deal anywhere.  

We just had about an hour and a half for lunch before our next free tour.  Our guide had recommended several to us that are right next to the Cathedral.  The one that we wanted to go to had a line out the door, so we were worried about time. We went to the other that had no line at all for a typical Colombian meal. We decided on the soup with potatoes, carrots, pork, and finely cut beef belly. We thought it was just a bad translation because never in a million years did we think it was really tripe.  That thought never once crossed our minds.  Not once! Who would eat a big ass bowl of finely cut stomach? I tried one piece before I realized what it was.  It was soft and chewy and disgusting.  I spit it out into my napkin. I couldn’t even swallow it.  It is a culinary abomination! That being said, the broth was actually very good, so we tried to eat around the tripe, but there was just too much to avoid. The potatoes were also finely chopped, so they were too hard to find.  We ended up ordering a tamal off the breakfast menu.  It’s way different from the Mexican tamales that you know.  It’s huge, and wrapped in banana leafs.  The corn meal isn’t as dry.  It’s really moist with pieces of corn and supposedly carrots, but I only found one of them.  It also has a large piece of shady looking chicken that is really easy to eat around.  What a lunch adventure! Not to be repeated. 

After our traumatic lunch experience, we were ready for our second free tour of the day. We love free stuff! This time it was a graffiti tour. I was really worried because there were close to 50 people there for the tour, but it worked out just fine (except for the rude people that would stand right in front so that no one could get a good picture). The guide had a speaker so we could all hear, and then I took my pictures as we were walking to the next stop.  

It was fascinating.  Graffiti is legal, so long as you have the owner’s permission, so they actually have artists that come from all over the world.  We saw a couple by a guy from Los Angeles. Some of them are commissioned by the building owner, like one next to a Mexican restaurant that is a luchador. Others are allowed by the building owners because they are tired of “tagging” and murals are a good way to cut down on that. So there’s all different kinds of graffiti. There is tagging which is what we are used to seeing. That’s someone writing their alias on benches and sides of buildings. That’s actually a sign of expression, but not to be confused with hooligan tagging which is gang names where they cross out the name of a rival and paint their name next to it. Also stencils are a form of graffiti. Some stencils are more complex than others.  You can see the same stencil all over the city.  And finally stickers! Yes those stickers on stop signs are a form of graffiti and self expression.  Who knew? Needless to say, we now have a new appreciation for all things grafitti. 

But, now it was 4:30 and we were downtown with nothing to do. We could go stand in line to get into the Cathedral and see some miraculous painting of the Virgen. If we wanted to wait an hour or more. The Pope is coming to Bogota, and he wanted to see this Virgen for himself, so they brought it in special from some Podunk village a few hours away. So everyone in Bogota– all 9 million of them– are waiting in line to see this painting. Evidently what’s good enough for the Pope is good enough for them. 

We opted instead for dinner at La Puerta Falsa since we didn’t get to eat lunch there. We had the brilliant idea to eat at a restaurant and then have them call us a taxi. Pure brilliance. We have read some horrible stories about taxi safety in Bogota. Things so bad I can’t tell my mother, or even your mother. Things that would have my mother on an airplane to Cartagena to rescue us faster than Joan Wilder came to rescue her sister. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. And if you say you think it’s an episode of Family Guy, I will scream.) So with a firm plan in mind, we set out to enjoy a true culinary delight. There were no menus, so I started pointing at what some other people had on their tables. Sometimes that is the best way to get something yummy. We had hot chocolate that you dip soft cheese and sweet bread into, and some sweet corn thing wrapped in corn husks. It was so delicious! Dessert for dinner! That’s what thetwinsontour are talking about!

So as we were paying we asked the lady downstairs if she could call us a taxi, but she said all of the roads are closed in anticipation of the Pope’s arrival, and we should just go up to the next street to grab one. However, as we mentioned we told the lady that we had heard that it was not safe for foreigners to do that. Luckily our taxi guardian angel was paying at the same time.  Just like my mother would do, she said my daughter will call a taxi on the taxiapp for you. But she couldn’t get it to work. There weren’t any available on the app.  So she had us call the taxi company so she could translate, and give them our location.  But the taxi company didn’t answer. Nor the next one. Nor the next one.  During this time her daughter was still trying to get the taxiapp to work to no avail.  So they decided they could escort us to the plaza to find a taxi.  Then we tried calling again, but no answer.  Then they realized that they were going to a pizza place near a hostel owned by their friend, and surely she could help us because she does that for her guests all of the time.  So we walked with them around town (through areas we had covered on our free walking tour that morning) in the hopes of getting a taxi.  So she delivered us to her friend at the hostel who spent about 15 minutes trying to find us a taxi. There just weren’t any taxis in the area because of the road closures, but there are millions and millions of taxis in Bogota, until you need one.  Thank goodness for our taxi guardian angels, or we would still be looking for a taxi.  We made it back to the hotel in the 32 minutes Google maps said it would take us.

That is all for now.  Don’t forget to like thetwinsontour on Facebook!

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 1

What a great first day in Colombia.  We took a private tour to Lake Guatavita and Zipiquira Salt Cathedral.  This is about the only thing we planned from home. We knew for sure that we wanted to go to the salt mines because, well, who wouldn’t want to do that? But then we found a tour that did the salt mines and Lake Guatavita for just an additional $30 dollars each.  Everyone knows that thetwinsontour love a good deal and jamming as many activities into one day as possible, so it was a no brainer to plan an 11 hour full day tour for our first day in Colombia.  Now it may not have been the best idea to plan such a long excursion for our first day, but we did it anyways. 

Leaving Bogota, we got to see the bike lanes. On the weekends, they close down more than 100 km of road, and dedicate them to bicycles. There are bikes everywhere! Once we left the city and were on the country roads, there were even more bikes. I actually think i saw more bicycles than cars. thetwinsontour were very glad that they had decided it was a double Dramamine kind of day! There’s lots of hills, swerving, lane changing, bicycle avoiding, quick stopping, and getting out of the car so that the car can make it up a slick hill involved in today’s adventure. 

Our tour guide took us up to a lookout in a shady part of Bogota so that we could see all the different stratosphere of the Colombian society– 6 of them–from rich to poor. We were supposed to be able to see all the different housing types and neighborhoods. Due to the aforementioned lack of sleep, the significance and interpretation was lost on me. So I did what all confused and dumbfounded tourists do, I nodded my head enthusiastically and said “ahh, sí” over and over. 

Lake Guatavita is famous because of the legend of El Dorado (there are several legendary cities of gold throughout South America that the Spanish searched for forever). This legend is based on the coronation ceremony for the chiefs of the Muisca people.  It takes years to learn all the necessary skills to be chief-at least the first 12 years of your life. Then you must go out in the wilderness and live alone for 9 years, with no contact from anyone, not even your mommy. So after many years of studying and isolation, the young chief is ready to be declared chief.  This involves him going out on this small crater lake on a gold boat at 5am so that the rising sun can shine on him. He is also dressed in gold, but not like a suite of armor.  He is covered in honey and they blow gold dust on him and the dust sticks to the honey. I don’t know if that attracts flies or other bugs? They didn’t really cover those important questions.  While the honey and gold covered chief is out there on the boat, his faithful subjects stand at the top of the crater cheering and throwing gold objects at him.  Hence the legend of El Dorado.  

It’s a nice little hike around the top of the crater, but there’s a lot of steps to the top. And its a much higher altitude than what thetwinsontour are accustomed to.  This is where you correctly infer lots of heavy breathing from thetwinsontour.  Luckily, we were part of a large, slow moving group, so we didn’t feel obligated to run up the hill.  We were the only English speakers in our tour group despite the fact that our local guide was wearing a Kansas City Royals cap. 

I just had a thought, can we call visiting a mine spelunking? Despite having sworn off spelunking several years ago, somehow we keep finding ourselves in caves.  A mine is kind of like a dry cave with neither stalagtites nor stalagmites, but I am going to say it qualifies. Anyways, the salt mine was pretty neat, and way different from the one in Hutchinson, Kansas. First of all you are able to walk into them from ground level–there is no need to take a miner’s elevator to get down there. I missed the explanation as to why there is a cathedral and chapels in the mine, so don’t ask me about the history of it.  I do know that it is fairly new though (like 50 years or less). There are 14 different chapels that are supposed to signify the different stations of the cross, but it really takes a lot of imagination to interpret that. For some of the chapels they even brought in marble floors. And they have colored lights illuminating all of the chapels because everyone loves a cave (or salt mine) with colored lights! thetwinsontour love artificially colored cave lighting.  All in all it was quite enjoyable.  

Despite the fact that the Salt Mines were only like 30 km from Bogota, it took over 2 hours to get back to our hotel due to monstrous traffic jams. It was after 8 by the time we made it to our hotel. It was a good thing that we didn’t eat lunch until after 3pm because that meant we were still full and didn’t have to brave Bogota by night to find something to eat. (Don’t worry mother, it was a really big lunch, and we had snacks.)  thetwinsontour were worn out and quickly hit the sack. 

that is it for day 1. 

thetwinsontour

Peru
Saturday, August 30, 2014

Peru
Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Peru
Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Peru
Sunday, August 31, 2014

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Sri Lanks Day 7 Colombo, Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 7 Today we headed down out of the cool mountains (I actually had to wear my long sleeve shirt in the evenings) and back to the sweltering low lands, which means a lot of hours on the bus (like all day long). We made a quick stop at a Hindu temple because we haven’t visited one of those yet. Not much to say about it except those tile floors were really cold on my bare feet. We also stopped for a photo op at Ravana Falls, one of the widest water falls in Sri Lanka, which isn’t very wide. Maybe it gets wider during monsoon season? I don’t know. It’s pretty, but wide is not the adjective that comes to mind when I look at it. It’s great for selfies except all the dang people clambering around on the rocks and swimming in the little pools at the base. I hate it when people get in my pictures! Of course if we had more time there, I probably would have been clambering around on the rocks too, but that’s beside the point. (Insert my mother saying here, “Girls! Thats just not safe!”)And everyone wants thetwinsontour in their photos. In the afternoon we visited a Buddhist monk school, so we got to talk to all of the boys there, and take selfies. They didn’t speak much English, but the word selfie is universal. SomTuee of them really liked to get their picture taken. Of course, most of the boys still weren’t back from the New Years vacation, so it wasn’t as crowded as normal. The youngest students there were 7 and they went up in age to 20. While they are studying there, they are learning to become Buddhist monks along with their regular school subjects. They wear the Buddhist monk orange robes and have shaved heads. Some of their robes are different shades of orange, but that doesn’t indicate any ranking or age. The Buddha just said that their clothing should be the color of dead leaves. I don’t know why it is the color of dead leaves and not the color of live leaves. But who am I to question the teachings of the Buddha? Out of respect for monks, you should never touch them. Our tour group gave each kid a notebook and an ink pen. When giving them something, you should hand it to them with both hands to show that it is given willingly. I handed several of them their gifts. They were so excited. For one notebook and one ink pen. Very humbling. It really makes you appreciate everything that we take for granted. That’s about all I can remember from day 7 because of course I am writing this several days later. Love, thetwinsontour