Marvelous Mountainous Medellin

28 de enero 2017
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia writing about Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

This might be a new record for late posts.  Over two months ago, from 11 de noviembre 2016 to 14 de noviembre 2016, I went on a trip to Medellin with Kelsey, Andrea, and Kismeth.


11 de noviembre
Bucaramanga, Santander and Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

Luckily for me (and everyone else), I wasn't sick for this trip!  We had an evening flight, pretty uneventful, and took quite a long cab ride to where we were staying: The Black Sheep Hostel.  The hostel was pretty nice - we had a private 4-bed room (2nd weekend in a row I slept on the bottom of a bunk bed!), shared bathroom with the room next door, common spaces (with lots of hammocks!), and drinks (including beer) and snacks you could get from the front desk and have added onto your tab.  They also had a bunch of activities, but the ones we were interested in filled up too quickly.  The neighborhood we stayed in was El Poblado, which was close to the metro and a short walk to all the nightlife.

Plus they had a HUGE bunch of fresh bananas you could pick and snack on whenever you wanted!

That first night after we arrived and freshened up, we decided we didn't want to waste any time and we headed out to Parque Lleras, the home of Zona Rosa, hub of the Medellin nightlife.  We wandered about and took in the scenery (lots of street art!) and hopped into and out of a few bars.  We even found a bar that played American club music (rap, hip hop, etc), and we payed a cover to get in and everything, but it turned out to be packed full of high schoolers and felt like a school dance, so we got our free shot included in the cover and left.

Such a cool atmosphere!

As we were walking around, we found a place that served FALAFEL! It was so exciting.  Bucaramanga doesn't really have food from most of anywhere else in the world, and it had been quite a while (probably since June or July) since I had eaten Middle-Eastern food.  Falafel Time was Subway-style, where you got to choose what to add on your sandwich, and damn was it good.

Just look at it.  Doesn't it make your mouth water?

Towards the end of our night we found a pretty cool discoteca called La Ruana de Juana, finally the atmosphere we were looking for.  We had some fun dancing, until this waiter started practically chasing us around the club because we hadn't bought any drinks.  After a while of dancing and dodging, we made our way back to our hostel to sleep.


12 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Al Alma Café for brunch. Brunch! Brunch is such an American thing and so not a Colombian thing.  It was SO GOOD.  I got an eggs benedict, which was tasty, but the real star of the show was Kismeth's french toast.

Yum

Heavenly.

The food and the coffee was beyond good.  Once we finished stuffing ourselves with brunchy goodness, we headed over to the metro stop.  Medellin is the only city in Colombia with a train system, and they are very proud of it and take excellent care of it.  We got yelled at and almost thrown off the train platform for eating a bag of chips.  This was probably the cleanest public transportation I have ever been on.  The train was spotless and looked brand new.

Medellin Metro Map. Our hostel was near the Poblado stop.

The coolest thing about the metro to me was that they had a teleférico (cable car) as part of their daily commuter system!  Medellin is in the mountains, and cable cars just make much more sense to ascend a mountain.  We took the train to the cable car and rode it up as far as it went.

Public transportation at its finest.

When we got to the end of the line, we paid an extra fare to take another cable car even further - up to Parque Arvi.  We had heard from our coworkers Ryan and Kate that there was a cool park if you rode the cable cars all the way to the top.  We were dressed cute in sandals and sundresses for a nice day at the park.

Joke's on us.

It's a national park. With hiking and horses and zip-lining and lots of cool stuff that you should be dressed differently for.  Oh, and it's raining.  We were so not prepared.

We should've done some research!

Parque Arvi seemed really neat though, just know what you're getting into.  There's several parks within the main park, and each has TONS of outdoorsy activities.  I'd like to go back with hiking boots and pants and a jacket. (It's pretty chilly up at the top of the mountain.)  We walked around a bit, and then explored a little craft/farmer's market, shopping and snacking.  

Oh deer.

After we had our fill, we headed back down the mountain, admiring the view and laughing at our misfortunes.  And what a view it was!  Everything looks so beautiful from up there.

Far o'er the misty mountains cold...

I've never really been in such a mountainous city before, so the concept was pretty fascinating to me.  From below, the city just looked like stacks on stacks on stacks of buildings.

So many!

We took the metro back to our hostel, where we freshened up and rested a bit before our next adventure.  Kismeth had made a friend on another trip she had made a few weeks prior - a Canadian that teaches Physics in Medellin.  Sam invited us over for dinner, and we made some pasta and garlic bread (though it turned out his oven didn't work and he had never noticed, so we had to improvise on the stove top).  We had some pretty deep conversations about philosophy and politics and more over our dinner and wine.  He was a pretty cool dude.

After dinner we headed back to Parque Lleras to meet up some of Sam's friends at a club, but Andrea and I didn't feel like paying cover to party that night, so the two of us slowly meandered back to the hostel and chilled in the hammocks on the roof.  We were originally going to try to make some hostel friends and play a game or something, but no one was really around, so we just chatted about life, our journey to/in Colombia so far, and our lives back home.  Andrea asks some hard-hitting heavy-thinking questions, which leads to some really deep conversations.  It was a really nice evening.


13 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

On Sunday, we decided to try and do some research after our mishap yesterday.  I looked at Trip Advisor at where we should eat and what we should do.  We decided D'Andre Gourmet sounded pretty tasty, so we headed up that way.  Unfortunately, we walked all the way there to find that it was closed.  Trip Advisor did not warn us of this.  We were near Parque Lleras, so we decided to amble around and find somewhere to eat.

We found a place that seemed cool, and we were hungry, and they advertised Mimosa Party, so we had a seat at Botanika Lounge.  The waitress initially told us that if we ordered an entree, we received unlimited mimosas, so we got super excited.  Then another waitress told us that was incorrect, and told us the actual price of the unlimited mimosas, and we decided to just have coffee instead.  It was an interesting place.

I ordered the ginger hash browns.  They were extremely gingery.

Kelsey's eggs had a bunch of flowers on them.

After we were nearly done eating, the waitress brought us a round ofggggy mimosas on the house and apologized for the earlier confusion.  They were damn good, and if we had ordered the unlimited mimosas after all, we probably would not have gotten much done that day.

After brunch, we grabbed a taxi to the center of the city.  We had seen some of it from the train the previous day and there were some cool-looking things we wanted to check out.

We walked out into a big square and were about to choose a street to walk down and observe, when a HUGE crack of thunder struck out right above us and the heavens opened up in a downpour.  We ran back underneath the roof of the expressway where all the street vendors were hiding their wares from the rain.  We looked at some of their wares, and I haggled a man selling Colombian jerseys down to $30.000 from $50.000, but then I remembered I was out of cash (plus I realized the jersey had buttons and I didn't like the buttons).  Still felt accomplished.

When the rain died down to more of a drizzle, we hazarded out and took some photos of the Palacio de la Cultura and the sculptures in the Botero Plaza on our way to the Museo de Antioquia.

What a gorgeous building.  We didn't get to go inside, but I'd like to someday.

Butts.

Guardian cat to the museum.

When we got to the museum, we found that there was a special price if you were part of a group.  Unfortunately, you needed more than 5 people to qualify and we were only 4.  So, we grabbed a few lone rangers to make our "group" and everyone came out happy.  One of our new group members stuck with us to tour the museum.  He was a German named Joshy who was volunteering for a year at a finca an hour or two out of Medellin that took in underprivileged youths and helped them to develop skills and get on their feet to become productive young members of society.  He was pretty cool.

The main attraction at the museum was the Fernando Botero exhibit.  Botero is best known for his voluptuous figures in his paintings and sculptures.  We learned from the exhibit that his uncle enrolled him in bullfighting school at 12 years old, and though he didn't end up pursuing bullfighting as a career, the environment inspired his first works of art.  He traveled to Europe and studied the Italian and Spanish masters, especially the Renaissance painters.  The Abstract Expressionists of New York taught him his loose, visible brushstrokes.  He donated many of his works to the museum of his hometown, Medellin.  I was surprised to learn that he is still alive, as I usually think of famous painters as being long dead from centuries ago (which I know is usually not the case; I had the same kind of realization when I realized Picasso only died not too long ago).

Botero's got a very particular style, and though he's got a bunch of historical figures in his paintings (Jesus, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Escobar), he's also got a lot of weird risque figures as well.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are very round (but not fat, Botero claims that his figures are simply voluminous, not fat).

Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, in all their voluminous glory

This picture has so much going on.  I'm not even sure what's exactly happening here.

Even his still life is voluminous

The Death of Pablo Escobar, 1999

After the Botero exhibit, we wandered around a few of the other exhibits until the museum closed.  There was some interesting stuff, mostly pretty modern.  We also had a nice view of the plaza below.

Hey, it stopped raining!

A study of Botero's hand

This was one of my favorites in the whole museum

Ain't that the truth!

What a fascinating collage of the baby Jesus.

After the museum closed and kicked us out, we looked again on Trip Advisor to find something to do that was open on a Sunday afternoon/evening.  We found El Pueblito Paisa, which we remembered Sam mentioning the night before, so we decided to grab a cab and head over.  Pueblito Paisa is a fake little town in the style of an old Spanish settlement in Antioquia at the turn of the century.  Think Renaissance Faire.  It's touristy and kitschy, but I like that kind of stuff.  We had heard it has a great panoramic view of the city, and we wanted to have a good view of our last Medellin sunset.

"The Little Town"

Marvelous Mountainous Medellin!

In addition to the kitschy little town, they also had a craft market there!  We looked around at all the booths and got a few cool little things.  I got a pendant for my mom and a necklace for myself from a woman who made things out of watch fixings.  My mom's pendant has a cat made of watch gears.  It's super cute.

Night view of the market and the Pueblito

All weekend Kismeth had been wanting to try the traditional Antioquian dish Bandeja Paisa, and she finally got to at the Pueblito!  Bandeja means plate or platter, and Paisa is someone from the region Medellin is a part of.  This dish is full of comfort food from the region - rice, beans, chorizo, chicharron, egg, avocado, arepa, ground meat, blood sausage, and plantain, all sharing the plate together.  It was so much food and looked good, but I wasn't hungry enough to order my own.  I did have a bite though, and it was yummy!

Bandeja Paisa

We didn't find the big 360° panorama mirador for our sunset, but we did find it after the sun went down.

To end our last day in Medellin, we wanted to get some food we couldn't get in Bucaramanga, so we traveled over to an Indian/Middle Eastern restaurant, Tabun.  The food there was so tasty, and no matter what you order, you are treated to an appetizer spread of naan with several dips and salads.  We stuffed ourselves full!

Dayum.

We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, and on our way home decided to pop in to get something else we couldn't easily get in Bucaramanga - good craft beer.  We sat down at Bogota Beer Company for a drink, and we got really excited at the selection of fancy craft beers!  (In Bucaramanga, you have your choice of Aguila Light, Poker, or if you want to kick it up a notch, Club Colombia in types of dorada, roja, or negra.  As comparison, Aguila Light and Poker are like your Bud Lites, and Club Colombia is probably equivalent to Miller.)

LOOK AT ALL THESE CHOICES

We read the whole menu and picked out our tasty treats, only to hear from the waiter that they were out of most of the choices.  We selected our beers from the few that they actually had in stock, and were still pretty happy!  I may have snuck out with a glass...that Lulo pushed off a table and broke a week or two later.

We headed home for a few hours of nap at our hostel, full of food, beer, and memories.  We then woke up as many were just getting home from the bars to take the long cab ride back to the airport to catch our out-before-the-sun flight home to Bucaramanga.

See How the Coffee Gets Made

18 de septiembre 2016
Hacienda el Roble, Mesa de los Santos, Santander, Colombia

Yeah, I know the famous quote actually refers to sausage and laws, but last weekend I toured a coffee farm, not a legislative building or a butcher shop (side note, for those of you who don't know, I actually DO know how the sausage gets made, and I've actually made that sausage with my family).

Last Sunday (11 de septiembre) I went on another adventure with the Caminantes de Santander to Ruta del Café Hacienda El Roble, Mesa de Los Santos.

For this trip, we got to sleep in a little bit and get on the bus around 6:30am.  After an hour or two, we got to the restaurant where we had breakfast (Only $4.000 for a full breakfast - eggs, arepa, and coffee!  That's approximately $1.33 USD.) and continued along our way to the Mirador del Chicamocha, where we took selfies, did a dynamic stretching warmup, and took a group picture.

What a view.

We then started walking up the road until we reached a dirt path leading into the trees - the start of the Ruta del Café.

The adventure begins.

We walked under the shade of the trees, chatting and admiring the view.  This walk was nice and easy - no rock walls to climb here!  It was nice and chill in the shade.  We soon came upon another beautiful lookout point, so of course we had to stop for more pictures.

Just admiring the view and contemplating my minuscule existence.

We continued walking without much to report.  Two hours of easy walking with beautiful views - in addition to the mountains and trees, we also got farms, a lake, and some really nice houses, not to mention all the various gorgeous flowers.  We talked about everything from our lives back home to the current political landscape of education.  But at long last, we made it to the Hacienda El Roble!

Hacienda literally translates to estate or plantation, but "plantation" in English has such terrible connotations.

Upon arrival, we were invited to tour the house on our own.  The hacienda is an old house with lots of cool stuff, including a library full of old books and a beautiful garden courtyard.  The house is also a hotel!  I'll let you see for yourself what else they've got.

After looking around a bit, we sat down on the veranda and had some time to relax.  They brought out snacks of mandarins, cookies, and the famous coffee.

Mandarins are like larger green oranges.  Or should I call them greens?

For the longest time, the best coffee in the world was this coffee from Indonesia that was made by harvesting the coffee beans pooped out by animals that ate the fruit.  A couple of years ago, the coffee from this region in Colombia (Mesa de los Santos) beat the poop coffee to become the best coffee in the world.

We snacked, we relaxed, we chatted, and then it was time to go out on our tour of the grounds (pun intended).  We set out to the Coffee Garden with Jack, the Caminantes mascot for the day, plus another dog or two that lived at the hacienda.  

Oh hey there Jack.  Jack is a 4-month-old golden lab that is owned by one of the Caminantes guides.

The Coffee Garden (not the Jardin del Café, why would you think it would be named in Spanish?)

Our tour guide teaching us about the coffee plants.

The tour was in Spanish, so I probably missed a few interesting tidbits, but I'll pass on what I learned.  I hope none of them got lost in translation.  This is the truth as I know it:

• Espresso has less caffeine than coffee.  Making espresso is a physical reaction because the water runs through the grounds very quickly, so less caffeine is produced.  Brewed coffee takes time for the water to run through, so a chemical reaction is allowed to occur, producing more caffeine.  The longer it sits the more caffeine is produced, so the first cup (at least for a pour-over) always has the least caffeine.
• They used to have only 1 type of coffee growing here, but they were required to plant a coffee tree for every sin they committed.  Now there's a whole BUNCH of coffee trees in many different varieties.

The fruit off the tree. 

Hey what's inside?

Oh look at that, it's the coffee beans!

• 1 gram of this specialty coffee can cost up to $100 USD.
• Overall coffee quality of the whole world ranks Guatemala first, Panama second, and Colombia third. However, at this small farm they have people harvesting the berries rather than a machine, so the people are able to harvest only the ripest red berries, whereas a machine would harvest them all.  This means smaller yields but better coffee.

Can you taste with all the colors of the coffee? (Dinosaur for scale.)

• After picking the berries, the next step is to "ferment" the coffee.  Through their experiments, they've discovered that coffee fermentation is best at exactly 18 hours.  19 hours and more leaves a weird over-mature aftertaste (like if you think about dating someone your parents' age).  Less than 18 hours and the micro-bacteria would not be removed.

The coffee fermentation basin.

• After fermentation, the next step is to dry the coffee.  The beans stay 9 days on each level; the bottom level is first, then level two, then the top level.  This is because the top level is the hottest.

The beans are on screens akin to the kind you'd sift for gold with.  Makes sense, since this coffee costs a pretty penny.

Our next stop was a presentation of what happens next to the beans, all the way to your glass.  We all packed into a little room where an old Colombian man told us his secrets.  First, the dried beans are thrown into a machine where they are deshelled.  The golden color you see is torn away, leaving a greenish-gray.  Next, the beans are sorted through and defects are removed (insect-ridden, diseased, etc).  For about 50 pounds of beans, perhaps 12 beans will be defective.  Next, the beans are roasted, gaining their traditional brown coffee color.  At this point, they can be packaged and ground at home or ground first and then packaged.  Grinding at home right before use is better, because with pre-ground coffee, every time you open the bag, the coffee loses more of its aroma, so by the time you reach the bottom of the bag you're drinking crap.

Coffee beans throughout the process.

Started from the bottom now we're here!

Once we got to the grounds stage, we moved into the room next door, where he had set up four different varieties of the coffee they make at this farm: Caturra, Nacional, Borbón, and Tipica.  He had grounds in glasses, and after telling us a little bit about them (in Spanish, so I am not sure of any descriptions here), he had us each come around and smell all the kinds.

This room smelled so good.

He then poured hot water into each one and talked about the chemical processes happening inside.  The first cup will always be the weakest, because the water and the grounds haven't been able to react and produce very much caffeine.  We were then each given a silver spoon (silver does not change the taste/smell of the coffee, where other materials might).  These spoons were used to break up the foam to release the smell so we could try the aroma.

Catando means to try, smell, taste

Next, we were each given a glass of warm water and a tiny "spitoon" (for lack of a better word).  Before we tasted any coffee and between each type, we were told to fully rinse our mouth with warm water.  After rinsing, we got a spoonful of coffee, ensuring that the coffee hits everywhere in the mouth to reach all the taste buds and get the full flavorful experience.  Our coffee instructor had this quick slurp-spit-rinse routine, but I decided that I didn't want to spit it out.  Why waste the best coffee in the world?  The slurping was fun though.  No quiet spoon-feeding for us....you gotta make the noise!  My favorite coffee we tried was the caturra.  It was very strong, but not as bitter as the others.

After we all had the chance to catan (no, not the board game) the coffee, we took another group photo and headed back to the hacienda for a bit before heading back to the bus.  We were settling in for the ride when we stopped again - we were given an hour to explore Mercado Campesino, an open-air market with lots of food, produce, souvenirs, and, unfortunately, flies.  

It was really cool to walk around and see all their wares though.

We were pretty hungry, so we decided to grab some grub.  Our group split off into a restaurant group and a street food group.  I love street food and wanted to explore.

Almost every other booth was selling arepas de chocolo con queso, with a little corn husk plate.  Saying this was amazing would be an understatement.

After a little snack of an arepa, a sausage, and some guanabana juice, we walked around and did some shopping, both actual and "window" (no windows in these little shacks, but you get the idea).

There was a booth selling medical marijuana, and another selling marijuana plants for your home.

Where am I again?

A picture of an American girl, wearing her new Colombian hat, drinking a German beer made in Colombia.

After walking around a bit and making some purchases (I got a new hat and some coffee whiskey liquor), we looked at our watches and noticed we were running low on time.  We climbed the pyramid-thing to get one last birds-eye view of the market.

Hey, I can see my friends from here! (They're the ones waving.  It's like Where's Waldo!)

We got back to the bus, where we made one more little stop to buy some of the delicious coffee we had tasted, and then it was homeward bound.  We got home around 6 pm, and I promptly fell asleep all the way until the next morning.