Vacation Time

For the last two weeks, we haven't had school, as we're in the middle of our three week class break. For various reasons, the English activities planned for the two weeks of in-school development took up slightly less time than expected, but they did occur, so that was good. It wasn't a bad two weeks. However, relaxing as it was to not be teaching in classrooms and having much more daily autonomy, it wasn't quite vacation, as it were.

But my, how things have changed!

Earlier today, I flew to Bogota. It only took three hours longer than expected, since our flight didn't manage to board before the 2 hour all-airport lunch break...but finally we arrived, descending into sixty(SIXTY!) five degree temperatures and the verdant mountain-ringed valley of the city.

 In a slight twist in Peace Corps (mis)Adventuring, I'd decided to use some Marriott points I'd accumulated during my short tenure as a corporate professional last year.

Which leads into the surreal fact that I'm currently sitting on the puffiest bed potentially in the world, with a "Pillow Menu" on the nightside table (just press 0 and order your favorite kind, gratis), on the highest (read: executive) floor of the Bogota Marriott. Across the hall is the executive suite which offers, for high rollers like yours truly, free alcohol, breakfast, and dinner-time "canapes."

(You should have seen the desk lady's look of dismay as she handed over my "elite" set of keys and told me of these perks. Eschewing the trappings of my fleeting Marriott gold status, I was definitely hauling a backpack as luggage along with a cheap guitar, and was wrapped in the windbreaker that is my only sub-80 degree clothing here in Colombia...To be fair, I wasn't really expecting the executive floor, so I'm sure my face was humorous to watch as well...)

Pinch me?

Idon'twanttobeanexecutiveIdon'twanttobeanexecutive...if I keep repeating it, maybe I'll remember how true it is!?  I swear, there were definite reasons I left this lifestyle...give me a few minutes and I'll gather my thoughts and remind us all why working in 100+ degree weather in disorganized, un-airconditioned or ventilated or even electric fan-equipped schools is more fulfilling than working for a corporate agenda and getting free room service... Okay, I'm back. Teaching is more fulfilling. It just, is. So there we are.

Anyway! I'm set to enjoy three days in this ridiculous hotel chain wonderland. Tops goals include:

• Put my feet on every surface that can be sat on (because, believe it or not, that's something not allowed in public or private spaces in Barranquilla. Maybe not here either...but not going to let that stop me)
• Watch Wimbledon
• Avoid small children
• Choose the volume of my surrounding music
• Work on personal writing projects
• Wear a long sleeved shirt with a hood at all times
• Meet up with awesome college friend, who just moved to Bogota for the summer(!)

I'm happy to report that four of these goals are being accomplished as I type. I'll let you guess which ones.

After three days here in the city, during which time I may or may not venture out of the room, I'll be traveling to a small Spanish colonial settlement for the last few days of the vacation. Probably won't be updating again until I have time to experience the sights and gather my thoughts. Or who knows. Maybe I'll just have that much time on my hands, and you'll hear more of my Posh Corps ramblings :) We'll see.

Happy mid-year break!!

Good as butternut squash...

Friday was a day just about as good as butternut squash, which is the best vegetable in the world. I love vegetables. So you see, this day was a wonderful day. Particularly because it actually included some delicious butternut squash(!) BUTTERNUT SQUASH. Yeah that's right, I'm going to shout that out there.

I have become accustomed to lowering my expectations for general things. This is a survival technique. This makes things like a hours-long walks in the boiling sun without finding the place I'm looking for, or prepping plans for a week-long intensive English seminar that gets turned, five minutes prior, into 2 days of 2 hour lessons, bearable.

It also makes unexpected discoveries, and actual successes AWESOME.

It goes without saying that successes/awesome things of a major sort do not often number more than 0-1 per day. Trifectas are even more rare...and I feel like sharing some good things. So, here you have it, a perhaps inordinately long post about my successful past Friday...this grew even longer since, as you'll perhaps see, successes are not won easily in these parts...but after everything they are incredibly sweet.

As a spoiler alert, I am including butternut squash as a "major success" and/or an "awesome thing." Moving on.

We're currently in our school "pause," which means we have three weeks without students at the school, aka three weeks of official reasons to not have class.  Since my school took Friday to input grades, and I am not a grader,  I took the day to do some exploration of personal projects.

1) The "Changing Lives" Foundation

With Jessica along, I trekked out to an organization I've been meaning to check out for months.

The organization is called "Fundacion Cambiando Vidas." Long ago, I'd read an article in the paper that mentioned an organization that offered horse therapy here in the area. Horse therapy, or equinoterapia is a type of (human) therapy that uses horses to help treat/work with cognitively and/or physically disabled people, from children to adults. I had my first experience with this at the incredible organization Three Gaits, Inc, in Madison, Wisconsin. Since that was the most wonderful volunteer experience I've ever had, I thought I'd see what this Barranquillan program was all about.

The place, by all accounts, was located about thirty minutes outside of Barranquilla, on the autopista (major highway). Jessica and I, working off of somewhat vague directions, got to the nearest landmark, and then had to resort to asking folks along the way.

"Horses?" asked the fancy school security guard. "Oh yes. Go that way. Enter the iron gate."
"But the gate says se vende," we said. (for sale)
"It's hidden," he told us. "You have to walk inside."
 Jessica and I walked to the gate. It was a huge, rusty iron thing, but when pushed, swung open to reveal a patchy field surrounded by wilderness.
"This is a turning point," said Jessica. "Not sure what of, but it is..."
"Nothing to lose," I said, setting off on the slight worn path through grass. The sun pressed down and the thick air buzzed with cicadas ( the real-feel temperature a cool 110 degrees.) Far ahead, we saw a rundown house, two stories tall with a curving outdoor staircase, surrounded by mango trees.
As we approached, it seemed the house was deserted.
"Not looking good," said Jessica.
I was about to reply, probably to say something inanely positive, when two dogs, one black and one tan, raced towards us, barking explosively.
Jessica, not a dog lover, jumped behind me.
"Oh hello!" I said (in English), noting the wagging tails. "How are you, pretty puppies!"
They forgave me my language difficulties and bounded around, circling as we stepped closer to the house.
Scrape, scrape.
A man in a worn white tshirt sat on a crate in the middle of the empty concrete bottom floor, sharpening some tool. When we stepped onto the patio he rose and limped outside, carrying a long, now-finely sharpened machete.
"Buenas," we said. "Es de, estamos buscando los caballos. Para terapia. Sabe donde quedan?" We're looking for horses, for therapy. Do you know where they're at?
We figured it didn't hurt to ask.
"Horses?" he asked, eyes milky with cataracts, face sunken. "That way. Beware of the dogs." He pointed straight-armed across the field with his machete.
Off we went, trekking down another sandy patch. When we entered the new compound, it was immediately clear that 1) there were horses, 2) this was not the place we sought. However, in typical friendly coastal fashion, the family of horse care-takers sent their son to guide us to the place...which unlike everyone else we'd spoken to, they seemed to actually know about.
And so, finally, we arrived at the foundation.

Upon our knock, a friendly woman escorted us in, and it was like entering another world. Turns out, this foundation not only does horse therapy, but has a complete, holistic program for disabled people. Children and adults can come either for one "jornada," (half the day), or for the full day.On site, there are therapists who talk with the patients and establish specialized therapy plans. Then, others run the activities. There is a music therapy room, with all sorts of instruments, a physical therapy room with machines and mats, a covered pool for water therapy, and then, about six stalls with therapy horses, and a small arena where patients were being given riding lessons, two people at a time. (and for icing on the cake, there was a 15 day old foal, Katy, with her mother Canela! (Cinnamon))

It is not a large place. Perhaps a football field and a half. However, it is organized in wonderful ways, so that rather than seeming crowded, it's like a cozy separate world. Everyone we talked to was knowledgeable and enthusiastic, but even more impressive was the clear trust and confidence shown in all the interactions between the workers and patients.

I have a meeting with the boss at 8:30 Monday morning to see if I can take some time on a weekly basis to volunteer there. All I can say is that, it would be amazing, lovely, wonderful, to get to dedicate time to this organization. Here's hoping it works out.

2) Airplane Ticket accomplishment
For the last few weeks, I've been trying to make a change in my flights for my actual vacation coming up. You know how, in the States, you just make a few clicks on the internet, and there you go? Well, not so much, here. Here, a flight change requires a trek to one of the actual airline offices. This saga started a few weeks ago, when I went to the closest office to get a flight shortened from Medillin-Bogota-Barranquilla to just Bogota-Barranquilla. This office happens to be located in the mall by my school, sort of a kiosk.
"You'll have to pay 80 mil pesos," says the woman. (about 50 american dollars/ an eighth of our monthly "salary.") "Penalties and taxes and all that."
"But, the flight is shorter!" I said. I figured I'd have to pay...but, you know, never hurts to ask.
After minutes of clicking, we come to what I was pretty sure was an agreement that I DON'T have to pay. Woohoo! thought I. Success! However, the kiosk didn't have the machine to print off the ticket. I'd have to go to a different office--a freestanding one.

These offices are, like far too many things around here (clinics, customer service of any sort, etc), similar to a DMV. You take a number and you sit on connected, generally blue chairs, while the folks at the desk do god-knows-what on a computer, and everyone waits in progressive stages of cranky. I'd reached, "more-than-slightly-irritable" by the time my number came up. After explaining my situation, I was once again told I'd have to pay. We then once again somehow worked out I didn't have to...except, to complete the transaction they needed a printer, and the printer there was broken. "We'll call you," they said, "to tell you when it's fixed. There's also this other office you can go to- but they'll be closed for the next few days."


Well, I didn't get a phone call. But, on the bus back from the foundation, I noticed that we were passing said other office. "I'm off!" I said to Jessica, jumping from the bus. Twenty minutes of waiting later, my turn came up. Only to hear: "La luz se fue." The counter lady clucked at her computer, shaking her head. (This phrase literally means, the light went away. It generally refers to an electricity outage...but I soon gathered that in this situation it meant their system was down."

"Oh no," I said. "It's that, I have to get this ticket for my flight next week..." and related my saga.
Once again, we went through the dog and pony show...but this time, 45 minutes later, not only did I walk out with my changed ticket having paid no penalties, I also got a voucher for a one-way ticket from Bogota to Barranquilla for whenever I next go, to make up for the "difference" in the flight costs!!! Yes, yes, yes, win!!

3) BUTTERNUT SQUASH
I needed to run a few errands, so I trekked the few blocks to a northern, free-standing Exito--one of the three major department/grocery stores around here (the name of this one, exito, happens to mean success). This particular Exito is near to nothing I generally go to, so it was my first time shopping there. Northern department stores tend to be much better stocked in general, and this one had a particularly good produce section. I wandered, searching for vegetables since Tyler and I were planning on cooking.

And then, I saw it.

At first, I couldn't be sure. It's been so long. But it was yellow-ish tan, flecked with green, with a round bell that narrowed slightly into a longer tube...yeah. It had to be.

Butternut Squash.

Just as a sidenote, butternut squash may have come up a few times (read: once a week?) in the past 8 months as something we (read: the obsessed veggie cookers aka Jessica and me) have missed in life. We may be overly obsessed. But still. It's probably the most delicious vegetable ever.

Of course, when I went to buy it, it practically broke the register--as in, they had no idea what it was, and I held up the line for a good 15 minutes while they figured out what to charge. Which means this is probably not a regularly stocked item. However, turns out it's a strand of the more common, local ayuhama, which is a big round squash that looks like a pumpkin, although its outside is a much duller orange and the inside flesh is harder.  (Have you ever cut up butternut squash by hand? Yeah. Ahuyama is even less fun)

But, prices established (it was cheap!), I purchased it and other goodies (veggies and BARLEY!), and I left excited to go cook my winnings.

4) Free taxi ride.
There was a nearby bus that would take me the almost-hour-long ride to Tyler's house. But while looking for it, an overly friendly taxi driver tried to give me directions. He took a shine to me, and by a series of events, which included me riding out to a few different barrios with some paying customers and almost crashing since the taxi driver preferred flirting to watching the road, I managed to get a free taxi ride to Tyler's, avoiding not only paying bus/taxi fares, but ridiculously sweaty busrides!!

5) Dinner and hammock
Tyler's house has a hammock. This I consider a daily success. So, it was pretty much heaven to swing in it while we waited for our tomato-onion-broccoli-butternutsquash-barley meal to cook. And then even better to eat said deliciousness swinging in said hammock.

I headed home in the late, breezy evening, full of complete happiness


If I could have just one day like this a month, I know that I'll make it.  :)

Hot hot hot

Channeling a few friendly PCV's blogs, here (and in terms of a top ten list, especially Jessica's great examination of noise levels: http://colombiajessica.blogspot.com/2012/06/your-pico-might-be-too-loud-if.html):

We are in the middle of our first winter here. Which means, we're in one of the hottest months of the year. Temperatures hit around high 80's to 90's on a daily average, but real-feels are about 103-107. And then in between the humid heat, sometimes these crazy storms roll in and cause storms and raging floods (a few weeks ago, a person was swept away in one of the street-flood arroyos and died, just a few blocks from the Peace Corps office).

So here you have it--the top ten reasons you know it is TOO HOT*



1) You must drink at least a liter of water, whether outside or inside, each hour to stay hydrated. (We're not talking, "let's keep our pee clear!" hydration--we're talking, retaining mental functions and ability to walk, keep your kidneys functioning sort of hydration.) Up that number to 2-3 if you have done any sort of exercise.

2) Exercising without a sweatband, on pain of losing your eyesight from burning sweat, becomes impossible (Hey there, menfolk-- you know how I used to make fun of you for wearing those? I finally get it.) Also, if you happen to be holding anything while exercising, your fingers will actually prune in their own sweat. Scientists, feel free to weigh in...but somehow I thought this was physically impossible?!

3) You walk out of a crowded, windowless classroom where you've spent the last 2 hours teaching, and even though you *know* the outdoor temperature hovers at a 105 degree "real feel," you suddenly feel as though you've entered air conditioning.

4) You are only five minutes into class, it's 6:30 in the morning, and  the amount of sweat dripping down your body is roughly equivalent to what coats your skin upon finishing a noon-time summer run in the continental US

5) You can't think in English, let alone in Spanish

6) Your super-high-temperature pasteurized milk goes bad in the refrigerator two days after opening

7) After a short walk outside, your male friends can literally wring out their shirts and have sweat pour out

8) Despite having been sleeping directly under a fan, you wake up in the middle of the night with your clothes and hair as entirely soaked as if you'd climbed into a shower fully clothed.

9) You are sitting still in your own house, at any time of the day or night, and the sweat is rolling down your body in levels you had only previously experienced during strenuous, summer-day-time physical activity.

10) You seek out the nearest grocery store, food court, or public area and, despite your hatred of crowds, malls, or any consumer space in general, plant yourself there for up to hours a day, as often during the week as possible, because it has air conditioning

 The second winter rolls around in August. More rain. More heat. More torture...until the beautiful "brisa" of December and February! Which, to look on the bright side, is only 6 months away...!


*These things, I hate to say, are in no way an exaggeration.

Where there's no such thing as a dessert failure

Tonight, I decided to scratch my cooking itch. I haven't cooked dinner for myself in months. So I persuaded friend Tyler to join me in said venture.

Dinner, I have to say, was amazing. A pasta sauce with carrots and peppers and onions and tomatoes, garlic and rosemary, pureed with my birthday-present-immersion-blender (!) (parents, I love you so much). With al dente pasta. This was surely about a hundred steps up from the usual ketchup-and-half-a-tomato sauce-served-over-pasta-mush which passes for spaghetti here. Don't get me started on local spaghetti...Moving on.

The issue came when, after torturing ourselves with thoughts of delicious food and cold weather in the United States, Tyler and I decided that it was perfectly feasible to make a cookie cake boiled-style.

We are not, and have never claimed to be, scientists.

Charged up and ready for the adventure, we made our third trip of the night to the neighborhood bodega (named, appropriately, La Bodega), and picked up all we needed to accomplish Best Recipe's cookies, in a pan, cookie-cake style.

Undeterred by the slight tastelessness of the cookie dough (ingredients just don't have the same...kick, around here), we piled it into aluminum pans and set them to boiling.

Half an hour later, then an hour, and then an hour and a half later, we realized concurrently that we had made a terrible mistake.

The butter and wheat and separated and covered the top with a glutinous mass which, as Tyler so aptly put it, tasted like cream of wheat. To make it even more appetizing, it looked exactly like boogers.

We spent a better part of the cooking time skimming the accumulating cookie boogers off the top of the pans. Sliding down the slippery slope of defeat, we decided to fry some of them. Chocolate cookie arepa! Not able to stomach this ourselves, we passed it out to the gathered family, warning them of not-so-delicious-ness. Instead, we got positive reviews!

Which made us realize that, here, there's no such thing as a dessert failure.

Enthusiastic about having an outlet so as not to have completely wasted our efforts, we ladled out the cookie "pudding" to the family. As it cooled, it condensed into something like flour-y carmel..and it was proclaimed delicious.

"Of course you can't boil something with butter in it," said my host aunt, after polishing off her pudding. "That will never make a cake."

...Science wins again.

That being said, there's a pretty awesome ball of not-cookie sitting in our fridge. It's super fun to play with. And it's getting pretty solid. Cookieball? Cookie flubber? Cookie rock? The final outcome remains to be seen...

but I can pretty much say with 100% certainty that it will be eaten by someone in this house...and most likely enjoyed!

Z-Z-Z-Z-ZZuuuumba!

Zumba. Or with lots of Z's...but that pronunciation is only in my head. The post is titled as such because there is a radio station that shouts out a particular phrase that sounds like that every few minutes. Right now I can't remember for the life of me what they're actually saying...but I hear that phrase about a hundred times a day. That being said, for now, in my head, it's replaced by "zuh-zuh-zuh zoooommbaa!" There. Now you can have it in your head too!

Anyway. For those few of you may not know what this is (hi, parents?!), Zumba hit as an exercise craze some years ago. It's an exercise-cum-dance class, that includes dancing to a variety of predominantly latin types of music and dance. I'd always heard of it, thought, "That sounds fun!"and promptly deemed myself completely incapable of participating.

Well, when I visited friend Abby in Cartagena, we headed to her zumba class for fun at night. (Unlike in Barranquilla, Cartagena has a variety of free awesome offerings during the week and weekends. Case in point- Zumba classes!)

And here's the thing: I could do it. I mean, I wasn't awesome. But somehow, shaking my butt, doing pelvic thrusts, not to mention following an instructor and doing brand new dance steps that were a mixture of salsa, reggae, and who knows what else for a full hour...was suddenly possible.

I attribute this to two things: 1) I have learned just a little bit of dancing in the last 8 months. 2) I have been humiliated so entirely and completely in dancing situations in the past 8 months, I have become almost immune to my previously crippling shame/embarrassment regarding my lack of dance skills. You want me to look silly with a class of 20 other people and try and figure out dance steps? Hah. I've done this alone in front of hundreds!

All foibles aside, it was super fun. The most surreal moment might have been when I found myself doing cumbia (a conservative, traditional courtship dance) steps to a Latin-ized remix of the Bloodhound Gang's "The Roof Is On Fire."

 Yeah. That happened.

Good to know that I'll bring one tangible skill back to the US after all this--the ability to join in a Zumba class, and maybe not be the worst person in it!

A food kind of day

Today was basically ruled by food. Not that I'm complaining...

Throughout this semester the Barranquillian volunteers have been holding English classes for the English teachers in the city. My class, which was planned primarily by myself and co PCV Jessica but helped out tons by the other volunteers, had a huge food focus (surprise!). We indulged ourselves for the last months teaching about American culture by picking our favorite (non-oven) foods that were associated with various regions, holidays, seasons, and/or all of the above, and introducing them as well as their context to the teachers.

Today, we gave the class over to them. The instructions were for them to create presentations based around their favorite recipes and give us the background of said food. We suggested they bring in food for us to taste, just for fun...and boy did they deliver.

Things I learned in class today:

• Yucca is also  known as Mandieca and also Cassava. It came to South America via the slave trade.
• Yucca has cyanide in it. If you eat it fresh, you're fine. But, say you're making bollo with it. Bollo is a sort of all-purpose food that's really just a log of boiled *enter starch of choice here*. It's sort of like a glutinous potato mass. Or, in the optimistic words of my visiting US friend, "it's like gnocchi!" Anyway, bollo logs are made to be sold on the streets and/or eaten whenever, a a cheap side dish to anything.  Which brings us back to the poison issue. As explained to us, the cyanide forms when some chemical in yucca makes contact with air. The longer this happens, the more poisonous the yucca can become. So when you make bollo, make sure you squeeze your starchy boiled yucca mass, because that will extract the poison! Nothing like finding more ways, other than salmonella (which, given the ratio of time-when-there-is-raw-meat-in-sink, to time-when-sink-is-raw-meat-free, is actually pretty miraculous no PCV has yet contracted it) to live on the edge down here.
• Mojarra, a common fish here, is actually tilapia. It comes in red and black versions and is caught in the local river
• How to make coconut rice:
• In the US, we're used to buying cans of sweet, tasty, creamy coconut milk. It's not cheap, but it's sure delicious. And easy. Here, coconut rice is a favored dish. Easy, right? Just pour coconut milk into rice and voila! Or should I say, presto! Well, no. Making coconut rice here includes making the coconut milk. Which  that includes grating entire coconuts, blending them, squeezing the coconut juice out, cooking down coconut until it caramelizes into "titote", blending the coconut with more water, to make the "second milk,"pour this into your caramelized coconut, then cook this with rice, sugar, salt, and optionally, raisins. Simmer until it's done
• There is a thing that is called "Junior Rice" that people eat here. Junior is the name of BAQ's beloved soccer team. The food is rice with ketchup. It's called Junior rice because these are Junior's colors...
• una bollita (little bollo) is a name for a beautiful woman
• although arepas de huevo -- corn cakes deep fried filled with egg -- look easy enough to make (fry a corn patty. Cut it open. Pour in an egg. Refry), they are apparently very hard to do in a way that keeps the egg inside.
• Boiled yucca eaten with cheese (or actually a variety of things eaten with cheese) is known as a "matrimonial"because the pairing is delicious but also because the cheese represents the virgin bride, the other thing represents the groom.
• In Santa Marta, a typical breakfast includes a fish soup. The fish is served whole, with the broth, which includes green bananas, scallions, onions, garlic, cilantro and avocado, ladled over it. This gives you lots of energy for the day!

Things I ate in class today:

• arepa de huevo
• yucca with bollo with suero (the whey of cheese, aka sour cream)
• boiled yucca
• "Russian Salad" - a salad with ham, chicken, peas, apples, yogurt, mayo, and lime. And iceberg. Usually eaten on white bread, we had it with crackers.
• tilapia
• coconut rice
• fish soup
• caramel-filled crackers,  of the sort given to you at mass but giant-er
• More bollo

Some of our teachers went all out for their presentations.

Serving the Santa Marta fish breakfast soup

Vueltiaos, the Colombian traditional hats, come in all sizes!

 After class and a little hammock swinging in La Paz, Tyler's barrio, I returned to the house determined to try out the "baño de Maria" method of cooking bread--as in, boiling it. Without stoves, we've gotten creative here--all credit to Jessica (check out our cooking blog to see the basic recipe and method... it involves elevating bread pans in a big pot, filling the pot with water so it comes two thirds up the pan, topping the pot and boiling until done)

I was going to make carrot bread. But that just didn't seem exciting enough. So I made it with beets and an apple. And even though I accidentally bought arepa flour, which meant the dough had not only bran and regular flour, but corn flour as well, and I'm missing a few cookie cutters, which was what I was using to elevate the pans so I balled up aluminum foil which isn't heavy enough and the pans decided to float...and I didn't use a single measuring device and combined about 4 different recipes I found online for quick vegetable breads...it actually came out super tasty.

So if you ever feel like being adventurous: Chop up two medium beets and a small green apple. Mix this with a half-2/3 cup yogurt, a half or so cup oil, 2 cups-ish of sugar, 4 eggs, baking soda, enough flour of any sort to make the batter of brownie-ish consistency. Add some salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and if you have them cloves (I didn't, but I can imagine they'd be good), and put them in small pans. If you're lucky enough to have an oven, go to...if not, boil away!

Conversation with Colombian housemate, who, unlike the majority of people here, I tell what's in it before she tastes it, rather than tricking them:
C: "Remolacha? (beets) Oh, Emily, what were you thinking?"
E: Well, it's an experiment..it's a sweet bread
C: No, no, what were you thinking?!
E: Try it!
C: Oh! It's sweet!
E: I told you
C: It's good!
E: *big grin!*

After which, my veggie-hating host brother tried and also approved. Aka, this must be fool-proof. Did I mention, I'm also terrible at baking?

Finished bread

giant pot used to boil bread. The water discolored since one spilled a little bit...

*quality of pictures terrible because they're all from my awful phone camera, still don't have a real working one!

In Search of Beauty (and finding it)

As Barranquilla is anything but pretty, it’s sometimes easy to forget how near extraordinary beauty actually is. Last weekend I hopped the bus to Santa Marta for a much needed city escape. Although I went ostensibly for a beach trip, I managed to have some wonderful food experiences as well…on which I feel like dwelling (Surprise?!). You’ve been warned.

After about a 2 hour bus ride, I dismounted near Santa Marta’s center. Relatively newly re-done, the city is a fraction of Barranquilla’s size and has a charming downtown area, with Spanish colonial buildings as well as a location directly on the water. Just blocks from where the bus lets out, I found my absolute favorite place there—a café called Lulo’s, near Santa Marta’s historical cathedral.

Lulo is a fruit that is something like a cross between an orange and a passion fruit. I had an amazing juice smoothie made of watermelon, strawberry, some other fruit, and ginger. Who knew ginger was so incredible in juice?! You should try it! This place is owned by a foreigner whose son is currently also in the Peace Corps! Talk about a small world. I’m obsessing just a little because this is something definitely foreign to Barranquilla—a reasonably priced café with non-typical food, with a focus on healthy and fresh. Entrepreneurs, hear me now: there is a market for this!!

Anyway. I completed the yuppie-hippie experience by journaling away while I waited to reunite with a fellow, Santa Marta-dwelling PCV. For dinner, she informed me, we’d be heading to a restaurant called “Baba Ganoush.” “It has an international food focus,” she told me. “Is that okay?”

Hah. The restaurant is located in Taganga, a small fishing village nestled in the mountains just a short bus ride from Santa Marta. The restaurant is set in the hill, open with a peaked straw roof. We sat to eat before an incredible view of the ocean and while the sun set behind ocean-surrounded mountains we supped on ayhauma (a local orange squash) soup, falafel, and a brownie sundae. And fresh strawberry margaritas. I think I just shivered as I wrote that…so much happy deliciousness!

The next day brought an early morning wakeup and homemade swiss-cheese-veggie-egg scramble, and then we headed back to Taganga. There, a small group of volunteers and one volunteer’s co teachers gathered. We hired a boat for the day, and for a slightly expensive fare, set out for a secluded beach.

Our hour long boat ride took us around craggy jutting mountainsides, where the waves crashed on the rocks and trickled down in spontaneous waterfalls. The boat wasn’t that big—a metal launch, and it seemed the waves were at least our size…there was nothing to do but trust our local guides and the somewhat suspect motor (it took about 20 minutes to start, the first time around…) What the boat DID afford us, however, was an incredible view of the surrounding scenery as well as the ocean waves themselves.

The surrounding water was five times as intense a blue as the clear open sky, and where it crashed against the rocks in effervescent waves it shaded to every variation of teal and aquamarine. I’ve never seen so many colors of blue. I’m suddenly understanding artists’ obsession with the ocean; I’ve always been a forest girl, myself, and although it would take a lot to change that, this beauty definitely won oceans some points in my book.

The beach itself was small, set in a small cove. There were actually three beaches to choose from there. We swam at one a few minute boat ride from the “main one,” which had a restaurant; when we arrived in the morning, the restaurant’s owner pulled out a tray of a variety fresh dead fish to choose which one we’d like to have for lunch. I chose Fred. Actually, I saved my money and ate the lunch I’d brought…but later on, I tasted some meat.

Fish here is always served whole, having been thrown in a pot of oil in its entirety to fry crisp. That said, the Sierra was maybe the best fish I’ve ever had, white and meaty, almost no bones (of course you’re picking the meat off the skeleton, so this is in context, here), and not even as ridiculously fried as they usually come. Maybe since they didn’t have to kill the sat-in-the-hot-market-sun-for-5-hours bacteria that generally accompanies the Barranquilla fish…

We spent the day swimming, relaxing, strolling, and eating, and then it was time to head back on the boat. I took the bus directly from there, and arrived back in my big city of Barranquilla…refreshed to start another week.

The weekend was yet another surreal side to my life as a Peace Corps volunteer on the Colombian coast…over and over again, all I can think is, “Who would have thought…?” There are too many ways to finish that sentence than I could possibly list.

All the photos below are stolen from PCV Heidi Jo, since my camera still remains un-fixed...