Duuude!!!!

After being toughened up by my battle with bandeja paisa, Catalina now believed me ready for the next most challenging part in my Colombian adventure: Organising the wedding. Now, to be honest, up to this moment, Cata and her mum have done pretty much EVERYTHING for the wedding, and will probably continue to do so. All I have had to do is yae or nae the shit that involves me, which is basically my suit, the food and the alcohol and was accomplished in less than a day. Everything else has been Cata’s territory. I don’t give a fuck what the color scheme is or what type of flowers ‘n shit we use, as long as it doesn’t look tacky I dont care and neither does Cata because, lets be honest, even if I did it, wouldnt matter!

Weddings preperations and weddings themselves are a womans game, and I sure as hell didn’t want to play. Cata didn’t want me to play either, she was having enough fun sorting it herself, but for some macabre reason she wanted me along to watch the action.

Being that the wedding was to be held at Cata’s folks place in Sylvania, everything had to be sourced from Fusagasuga, the largish town nearby, which meant travelling the two hours to Fusa, even for minor details. As painful as driving two hours to crazy town to organise a wedding sounds, I honestly didn’t mind too much at all. For starters, I was still new in the country so I still got a kick out of cruizing through the countryside and checking out the towns, also because we had to leave early to beat the morning traffic and did’nt leave til after 6 o’clock, it meant that we got to eat at restaurants for breakfast and lunch, which if anything else did’nt, had me sold.

So on the Monday morning of my second week in Colombia, we headed out for a day of wedding shit. Cata and her mum had sussed out three different reputable event organisers in Fusa that were to sort out the majority of the details like food, the cake, tables, waiters, decorations, etc. In Australia, the wedding industry is very posh business indeed, full of the type of people you might find working as real estate agents or air hostess, the type of people that have put me off a career in wedding photography in favour of working shit jobs and being broke, so I had prepared for a day of pain when we set out that morning.

Cata’s family are slightly posh as well, so I was quite surprised when we rocked up to the first place, which was situated next on a street full of mechanics, and rang the bell next to the corrugated iron rolled door. A young lady appeared in a window/doorway above us and lowered us down a key on a peice of string to unlock the said roller door. Wow. Colombia definately is’nt Australia….

Inside was like a big warehouse, full of chairs, tables, tarpolan tents and other event gear. We took a stairway up to a mezzanine office area where Cata and her mum engaged in a long conversation with the propieter while I sat there looking at a portfolio of there work, trying to decipher the code they were speaking via my limited knowledge of the spanish language and my adept skill in reading body language.

45 minutes later we amerged from the warehouse with a small invoice listing the required services.

“So, um, what’s happening with them?” I asked,  my interpretation skils having failed.

Apparently neither Cata or her mum liked the place and had decided to just hire out there tents. Good by me, that was one down and two to go with me not having to do anything yet. Bangin’.

Colombian cities arent really the easiest place to navigate by car, so needless to say we got lost trying to find the next joint which was in a more business-y area of Fusa half way up the side of a hill across the road from a school. I gotta say that from my first impression of this I would have rather gone with the warehouse, because I much prefer rustic charm to gay fucking flourescent streamers and fucking huge flower pots.

This place looked like the it specialised in 1980’s themed school formals, but had been recomended with very high esteem from a friend of catas mums. I was beginning to learn that the wedding business was a completely different ball game in Colombia than it was in Oz. The emphasis seemed to be on the outcome produced by the organiser rather than on their face value and posh points.

Waiting for the owner, this proved evident as I flicked through their portfolio. A lot of the events they had organised looked very elegant and beautiful, and the decor was nowhere near as flamboyant as in their show room. After ten minutes waiting the owners husband came out and informed us that his wife was busy and we would have to come back at two (it was now 12:30). No probs, I was getting hungry anyway.

We had lunch at a nice place in the centre which did a killer soup and was waited by a couple of pretty, young girls in VERY tight pants. Womens pants come tight in Colombia, very tight. So tight in fact that the camel to is an every day thing here. I dont even giggle when I see it anymore….

Luckily, when we returned to the planners, the ownere wasn’t rockin the camel, because she looked like Jabba the Hut and had an attitude to match. Cata went through and extensive list of what she wanted for the wedding with the Hut, and although a lot of what they were able to provide was quite nice and elegant, if not with a little touch of high school formal, she was unwilling to budge on many small, but important details.

Just from the body language I could tell she was a hardnosed bitch. We left the place after an hour and a half with a (fucking expensive) quote for what we wanted, but not really keen to comitt to the dark side.

Another confusing drive later and we ended up back in the center, ready for round three. I was buggered after lunch, so by this stage I was well and truly fucked and not really keen for another episode similar to the previous one. I didn’t feel to confident about this as we entered the place, which was located at the back of a fucking toy store. Jesus….

Now, at this point it would be wise of me to alert you to a lesson in life that we should never ignore but most always do: NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER.

Our third candidate, Diana, aside from having an office in a toy store, was miles ahead of anything we had seen do far. Her folio was subtle, stylish and elegant and she was flexible with all our needs. Not only this, but she was very amicable too and actually acknowledged my presence, which was nice….

Cata and her mum spent an hour and a half chatting with Diana and left the place with a very reasonable quote and smiles on their faces. I left with one too, as it now meant that we could go the fuck home….

But seriously, after this day I began too look at the wedding in a completely differnt light. This was a big fuckin’ deal, we had to make this right. I didnt want my mates travelling halfway across the globe to attend what looked like a year 10 formal with shitty food hosted by a complete bitch with a mangin’ camel toe. I vowed then and there to take a more proactive role in the preperation of our wedding, or at least stay the fuck out of Cata’s way and agree to everything she says without argument.

A wedding is basically like a big party for two lovers, and I like parties, and although it’s really faggy to admit it, I like love too, so fuck it, I thought, Im paying for it, I wanna make this good. Or a least make it possible for everyone to get really, really drunk at the reception…..

Arriving back in Bogota after my whirl-wind introduction to the familia Bejarano-Sanchez, it was quite a relief to just cool out and relax a little bit after being on the go and jet-lagged for the past week. For a the next few days we pretty much just hung out at cata’a place and made small voyages into the centre of the city and other areas of interest to catch up with cata’s friends and, more importantly, eat.

It was during the week of self indulgence that my sinful love affair with the Colombian standard, Bandeja Paisa, began. I cant remember why we were out, but we needed a place for lunch, so Consuelo suggested a place nearby called Las Acasias, that specialised in Antioquian cuisine. Antioquia is an area in the mountainous heart of the country that is famous primarily for two things: Coffee and Pablo Escobar, the now very dead former drug trafficker who called Antioqia’s capital, Medellin, home.

Antioquian quisine is very popular all over Colombia, so you regularly see signs at restaurants with pictures of Mustachiod men in white clothes and broadbrimmed flagging you in to try the goodness. Las Acasias was no different, and as we were seated a little rush of exitement swept over my body in anticipation of finally trying the dish that I had heard so much about both in Oz and in Colombia. In spanish, the word bandeja = tray, and paisa = slang for a person from the Antioquian region, but a more accurate translation would be bandja meaning fucking, and paisa meaning massive plate of tasty shit that will clog you up for 3 days before you discharge something the size of a house brick.

This is no joke. When my plate came I actually peed just a little bit, i was that excited. This thing was HUGE!!!! Having already nailed a bowl of meat and potato soup, a couple of arepa’s (tasty lil’ cornflour patties) and two glasses of sangria, I was a unsure as to wether I could tackle this beast and come out on top. I mean, when it comes to food, I don’t fuck around. I can smash a couple of Ultimate whoppers no probs and fuck off a large pizza with the lot easy, but this shit was something else.

The plate alone was the size of the steering wheel in a semi-trailer, and was packed to the edges with rice, shredded beef, beans, a whole fucken fried platano (like a banana but bigger), a chorizo, a morcilla, chincharon (pork crackling but meatier), avocado, arepas and topped of with a fried egg. FUCK!! I didn’t know wether to cry in joy or pain. I felt like Steve Erkel fronting up to Mike Tyson. This thing was BIG. Not only big, but heavy. This thing would sink the country if they weren’t careful, and apparently in the countryside the serve ’em BIGGER! WHAT??!!!

The story goes that after working in the coffee fields all morning, the workers would be so hungry that the needed something more subsantial than bread and hot chocolate to satisfy their ravenous appetites, and so some genius paisa lady (and it definatly was a lady, cos Colombian men just DO NOT cook in the same way that Aussie men DO NOT drink vodka cruisers or UDL’s) came up with this feat of culinary brilliance. And what a feat it was….

Half way through  I was feeling full. I ate all the goodies first: the egg, chicharon, chorizo and morcilla, spicing ’em up with a little beans and rice, but that was my downfall. The problem is you are lured in by all the tasty meats, and so once youve got these down you’re already feeling pretty full. You then look down at your plate and realise youve still got a sea of rice, beans and shredded beef to get through, not to mention the arepas and avocado. SHIIIIITTTTT!!!!!

So, there I was, faced with a battle that I wasn’t sure I could win, but not ready to accept failure in a new and challenging land…

I’m not sure wether it was the jetlag or a delirum caused by an over-indulgence of fried meat, but all of a sudden I was transported back 5 or 6 years ago, to a pub in Adelaide where they served these massive chicken parmigana’s the size of a lounge cushion, topped with three different types of meat. I friend had taken me there, and I recalled watching him mop up the remains of his parmie with a slice of bread before getting up and heading to the salad bar, as I sat there with half of mine still sitting unscathed on the plate.

Somehow, seeing my friend slay this beast with such ease brought up a sense of envy in me that forced me to eat on and finish this monster off, regardless of the consequences. I am an egotistical person and dont like to be outdone. It’s not that I’m a sore loser, I just have a problem with not winning, not being the Alpha, just as all men (yes ALL men) do, and as my mind resurfaced back into the restaurant in Bogota, that same feeling from years ago came back to me as I looked around the room.

Business men were nailing their meals with the ease of experience in this cuisine, and I wanted in! A second wind (litterally. I mean, beans, c’mon?) came over me and I raised my fork and attacked the plate like a leashless pitbull in a kindergarden, relentlessly, taking no prisoners!

But, alas, it was not to be. Personally, I blame the appetisers, but that is a poor excuse, and a put my fork down and raised my hands in defeat as a small portion of beans and rice stared back at me, a sense of calm came over me: I was a beginner in a sea of champions. I had just got here, less than week of the plane, how could I compete with the stomachs of a race brought up on a steady diet of meat and beans with the modern Australian wank of gourmet hamburgers, rocket leaf and red-wine jus?

Tasty as they are, a glutton trained on this diet can’t compete with the likes of these titans. It’d be like a bare-knuckle fighter being trained in ballet!

“Calm yourself young soldier.” I told myself as the waiter removed my disgrace from the table, “You have four months more to prepare.”

And with that, made it my mission, no, not my mission, but my duty, to leave Colombia as a champion of the plate. Chefs and cooks alike would cower in my presence, and no dish would be left intact. It would be mine. Oh yes, it would be mine…..

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