Oh my my my. Has it really been so long since I last wrote?
On Medellin: The city is nestled in a green, sunny mountain basin and is nicknamed "the city of eternal springtime." Not a bad place to live (or to seek respite from the cool, rainy days of Bogota). My stay was marvelous, and I found myself not wanting to leave on Monday night. Upon my arrival on Saturday morning (around 7 AM after an 8-hour night bus ride), my host greeted me with a metro ticket back to the bus station, where we headed off to a hilltop near San Felix (just outside of Medellin) to do some paragliding with a group of couchsurfers. In spite of not actually getting to fly (the wind picked up and no one was allowed in the air...although that could have made for some really exciting stories), the day was good. I managed to wolf down more than half of my bandeja paisa for lunch (a plate of rice, beans, about five types of meat, fried platain, salad, and potato), which may have been the day's most important accomplishment. Sleep caught me early thanks to the bus ride the night before. On Sunday Seb (my host) and I explored the Botanical Gardens, went to the market to buy fresh fruits and vegetables (I'm talking stands upon stands of screaming vendors selling nearly everything), and rode a cable car (which is actually a metro for people that live in the hills of the city) up to the northeast hills to enjoy the view. In warm Medellin, I began to sincerely appreciate the abundance of fresh fruits and juices that an equatorial country can offer--guanabana, lulo, granadilla, naranja, banano, fresa, mango--the list goes on. I arrived back in Bogota on Tuesday morning with the strange urge to put my apartment's seriously neglected blender to good use.
On to the next weekend: Villa de Leyva. Villa de Leyva is a small pueblo known for its white colonial-style buildings and quiet character (although I've heard they throw a great party on festival weekends...). I caught a ride with my friend Catalina, who I met in the states playing Ultimate (reason #252 that I love this sport.), and her family. They have a gooorgeous house about a five minute walk from the center plaza. The weekend was puntuacted with delicious new foods, quiet walks around the town, and a trip out to the countryside to her family's farm, where I ate what will most likely be the freshest chicken of my life (killed that morning and slowly grilled to yummy perfection). The landscape in the countryside around Villa de Leyva is, like all of Colombia, breathtaking. After chicken-eating, we took a walk down a path called the Paso de Angel, which a trail that snakes along the top of a ridge overlooking a couple of rivers and the rest of the mountains. At one point, the path no wider than a foot and a half, with what must of have been a 400 meter drop on either side (no guardrails, we don't need no stinking guardrails). I could sit comfortably on this part of the ridge with my legs dangling on either side, which I did (there's photographic evidence, too). Among the new foods that I sampled: Mogulla, a type of whole-grain sweet tasting bread that is amazing when it's fresh; chicha, a drink made from fermented corn and served cold; fresh empañadas (not new, but still delicious); morcilla, typically blood sausage stuffed with other hearty things like rice and peas; papas criollos, small round roasted potatoes; and chirrinchi, aguardiente flavored aromatic herbs and perfect to warm you from the inside on a cold desert night. Might I also say that Catalina's mom is an excellent cook, and I will never, ever be able to re-create her fried eggs, although I plan on trying.
The time here is flying, yet unlike my last journey far away from home, the passage of time isn't characterized by the mounting anxiety over a departure date, nor a sense of hurry to see everything that I can within such a short period of time. Bogota needs this kind of attention. As one recent acquaintance put it: Bogota is a lot like the best lovers. At first glance, you may not be seduced by its overwhelming beauty. This is no Buenos Aires, no Paris, not some uber-developed, squeaky clean place. Yet little by little, the city reveals itself as something that has much more to offer than a pretty face. You find yourself completely engrossed with what you might find next, and wind up staying for much longer than you expected...
Finally, I'll leave you with a song by a salsa band out of Bogota (a few years old, but it made it over to Europe and is still really popular here). You'll recognize the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYvkJ-H-u4I
Take care, all.
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