MUNGO EATS Latin America

We are in Popoyan, Colombia, which is another beautiful city in this wonderful country.  It has a historic centre which is filled with colonial architecture, most of which has been painstakingly restored following several earthquakes.

   The temperature is quite nice.  As you enter a city in Colombia, there is always a sign which gives you information about the city.  It tells you the population, the elevation and the average temperature.  When we were near the Caribbean, the average temperatures were about 30 degrees!  We are now at an average temperature of 19 degrees.  Yippee!

We went for a walk around town this afternoon, to explore our new surroundings and we saw this.

Obviously Christmas is coming, so we should expect to see Christmas decorations and advertisements, but it still hard to take.  Here are some more examples

I am not sure what the Smurfs have to do with Christmas, except that these Smurfs are wearing red hats, not white (for all you non Smurf experts, only Grandpa Smurf used to wear a red hat, all the others wore white!!)

I don’t know, somehow I don’t get the same feeling when the backdrop for the decorations is a green, green park!  I know that Christmas in Calgary is not always white, but at least it is not usually tropical green!!  We will be in Lima, Peru for Christmas, staying with our friend Giulliana’s family.   I am told I will be served hot chocolate even though it is summer there!  Can’t wait!

I didn’t post yesterday, but I should tell you about the day.  Every day at the Hacienda is started with a fabulous breakfast.  Our hostess, Maria Teresa, serves us a plate of fresh fruit, granola and yogurt, 2 eggs, done anyway we wish, a tortilla and cheese buns with butter and jam…and of course, coffee!  The table is always immaculately set, and there is always a centrepiece of fresh flowers on the table, flowers that are gathered from the garden that morning.  The first morning we each had a Canadian flag, standing in a glass of coffee beans, sitting at our place at the table.  The hospitality  is incredible. 

After breakfast we walked up to a viewpoint on the plantation, so we could see the entire farm.  You walk through the fields of coffee, past bamboo groves, by many exotic flowers to get to the viewpoint. 

It is a beautiful view.  We could look down at the main house, and across the fields of coffee.

After we walked up to the viewpoint, we decided it was  time to drive into town and get a few supplies.  Sean decided to stay behind at the house.  When we got back to the house, we found the new buddies hanging out in our place, crowded around Sean and his IPod.   Ah, the joy of electronic games.  It was a little cool and cloudy outside, so we let them hang out inside.  They also played a few board games.  They ended up staying in our house for the whole afternoon and evening, finally toddling off to bed around 9 pm.  Our kids got a second night off from homework, because they were busy playing with their buddies.  Lucky kids. 

This morning we left the hacienda and it was with a few tears.  We felt so welcome at this home.  Everyone we met on the plantation was friendly and went out of their way to ensure that we were enjoying ourselves and were comfortable.  Maria Teresa visited us no less than 3 times the first day to make sure we were ok and didn’t need anything.  She personally brought us more toilet paper because one of the three bathrooms didn’t have paper!!! 

The mother of the children that we befriended was crying as we left, thanking us so much for allowing her children to play with ours.  She gave each of our kids a big kiss and hug.  Kevin and I got bracelets with the plantation name on it when we completed the coffee tour, but they brought more bracelets down for Sara, Sean and Mungo.   They gave us a couple of farm coffee labels to stick to our trailer.  One of the gals came down to the guesthouse especially to give Mungo a goodbye hug.  And a few minutes after we left the farm, they raced after us to bring us Sean’s slippers and PJs, that had accidentally been left at the house.  Now THAT is hospitality!!!!  Amazing place, one of the trip’s highlights!  Don’t miss it if you are in Colombia!

www.haciendaguayabal.com

Tonight, we are about an hour out of Popoyan.  We will be going to the city tomorrow and may stay a day or two to check out the sights. 

We are in coffee country.  It is amazing, when you look around, all you see are millions and millions of coffee plants.

   We are staying at a coffee plantation, Hacienda Guayabal.  Quite a number of the plantations have started catering to tourists, and you can find a wide range of accommodations on the different plantations.  We are staying in the casa campesino, not the main  house.  We have the house all to ourselves, and it consists of 6 bedrooms,  a living room, a dining room and a kitchen.  We were going to stay  for 2 nights, but I think we will try to extend this to 3 nights. 

The house we are staying in is attached to a home that some of the workers on the farm  live in.  There are 3 children next door, and Sara and Sean are pretty happy to have new people to play with.  There is a pool up at the main house, and we were going to go swimming today, but I couldn’t drag the kids away from their new friends.  The kids spent the afternoon making paper airplanes, and cranes and making balloon animals, which quickly degraded into making water balloons.  It is nice to see them having fun. 

Kevin and I had a tour of the farm, where we learned about coffee again.  They do things slightly different in Colombia. They use an oven to dry their beans, instead of the sun, and they don’t hand sort the beans at all.  They grow only Colombian coffee in Colombia, which is a hybrid developed especially for this part of the world.

   It does not require shade to grow.  It sure makes a nice cup of coffee.  The sad thing is that all the “good” coffee is exported and the people of Colombia actually drink really, really crappy coffee made from all the reject beans that can’t be exported.  All the diseased beans are locally consumed. 

Tomorrow Kevin and I will venture into a nearby city to restock the very low supply of groceries left in the van.  I think we will let the kids hang out with their new found friends.  You never know when they will get to meet more kids, might as well let them enjoy them when they find them. 

A few longish days of driving and we are half way across Colombia:

View

Colombia – Half Done in a larger map

Colombia has proven to be a very friendly place and there is really quite a bit to see and do. We have plans to be in Lima by Christmas so we can’t linger and will only have time to barely scratch the surface of this wonderful country. Maybe next time!

Tonight we are in La Pintada, a small town about 1 hour south of Medelli’n.  We thought we would have a relatively short day of driving today, but that was not the case.  The roads are actually quite good now, no more potholes, but they are busy.  The highways are full of large trucks and because of the curvy nature of the roads, you really can’t go too fast and we often get stuck behind semi trailers, that we find difficult to pass. 

Once we got into Medelli’n, we got lost, of course.  It is a strange thing, but there is really no time that a highway just goes straight through a city.  How I long for a Deerfoot Trail or a Trans-Canada Highway that just goes straight through.  It may not be the fastest way through our town, but it is brainless.  Luckily, our GPS seems to know the roads, kind of, so we just kept correcting towards where the GPS wanted us to go and eventually we found our way out of town.  In most of Central America, the GPS couldn’t even find the road it wanted us to be on.   

Once on the south side of town, the traffic was even slower.  There are places where the highway is under construction and we did pass one accident, but really I think the thing that caused the most delay is that sometimes the curves on the road are so tight that two large trucks cannot be in the curve at the same time.  The roads are incredible, just cut into the sides of mountains.  at one point today, we passed through a town that was two houses wide all the way through.  The town was located on the top of a ridge and it consisted of the road and one house on either side of the highway.  The front sides of the houses were level with the road, the backsides had to be supported by stilts, that is how quickly the land dropped away.

As I said, tonight we are in La Pintada, which is a small town in a large valley.  We are back down at about 700m.  Up, down, up, down.  It is not too bad here, a bit warm, but not anything like the coast.  We are staying at what I can only call a plantation.  It is a large property, that has a restaurant, a couple of pools, and a dozen or so rooms.  There is a DJ setting up, so I think there will likely be a party here tonight.  I think that people can “rent” places like this to have their parties at.  In any case, it is a beautiful place, up on a hill, with a gorgeous view of the river.  Pretty nice digs.