The Good Life in Columbia
The highlight of our last week in Columbia is visiting Carlos, my former coworker from Macromedia. After spending 4 years in the United States, Carlos now lives in Medellin with his lovely family: his wife, Sylvia, and daughters, Juanita (7) and Valentina (4). After returning to Columbia, Carlos started his own strategic IT consulting business and is very successful. Carlos is a wonderful host and takes us site seeing and to a fantastic dinner on our first night. Unfortunately, his daughters are sick, so his family is not able to join us.
On Saturday, he picks us up bright and early at 8am for an entire day of site seeing. We drive in his luxury BMW to a town where he grew up, then to Penon de Guatape, a huge rock protruding above a manmade reservoir. We climb at what feels like 30 flights of stairs to the top of the rock, so that we can enjoy a 360 degree view of the beautiful reservoir and surrounding hills. Hungry, we go to a nice restaurant for an almuerzo tipoco: grilled meat, rice, beans, plantains, yum! After lunch, we take a leisurely boat ride to “Fantasy Island”, which is not quite the same as the TV show, but nevertheless, a nice remote island. Even with sick kids, Carlos invites us to his house for dinner because Paul is eager to cook for everyone. We spend a wonderful evening with his family. Quinn and Juanita play together. Connor enjoys the Wii. Paul cooks and I have “adult” time with Carlos and Sylvia. We leave with thoughtful gifts in hand: Columbian grown coffee and cookies. A memorable day for all of us!
During one day on our own, we go to a museum with a Botero exhibit. The plaza in front of the museum has Botero’s sculptures, all simply named like “cat” or “head”, and all are fat. His paintings are beautiful – again, all of fat people and animals painted on large canvases. We are interested to know why Botero is so fascinated with fat things…
We are now on our way to Ecuador to meet Patrick, who arrives on the 7th. We take long drives through the countryside which is stunning: steep mountains, lush valleys, green foliage and coffee plants everywhere. One of the things that I love about Columbia is tinto, a small cup of coffee which is available everywhere: street vendors, restaurants, hotels, offices, etc. Columbians seem to drink tinto 4-6 times per day. At offices, a woman is dedicated to serving tinto to the employees all day. Sometimes, tinto is served already mixed with sugar, sometimes not, but never with milk and always delicious. Columbia is wonderful – filled with people and sites that we will always remember fondly.
Tags: Columbia, Travel
hwy1alltheway
Leave a Reply