Colombian food

We made it to Salento last night and so far, we love it here! This is the first place that has felt truly restful to us, although that may just be because the hustle and bustle of city life isn’t what we are used to back home anyway. Either way, this is the first place we would highly recommend you visit! There is actual good coffee here (not just good, but excellent, double shade grown coffee!), the people are friendly, the vibe is relaxed, the scenery is beautiful, the temperature is currently 50’s at night and low 70’s in the day, and since it’s a village, you don’t have all the exhaust pollution you smell in the big cities. There are also several coffee farms you can visit and lots of places to hike, so we are most excited to be here a week!

Unfortunately, I ended up having a relapse of sickness right after I posted the last blog, but am on the up again now. It’s really hard to find food here that isn’t fried, and we think that contributed to it taking longer to recover than anticipated. Here’s hoping we are actually past it now! I’ve basically been ill a fourth of the days we’ve been gone!

Anyway, as promised, below are some of the foods we’ve been eating! We’ve actually found most Colombian food to not have as much flavor as many of the foods we’ve had in other places. They seem to use few spices, and to Kirk’s disappointment, nothing is spicy- it’s even difficult to find hot sauce or hot peppers in the store! We’ve still found a few things we like though!

We’ll start with one of my favorites, Caldo de Castillo (Rib Soup). This is a pretty simple breakfast soup that you can find everywhere – you can even get it to go in a little styrofoam cup from many street vendors. I haven’t looked up a recipe, but it seems to basically be a portion of beef with potatoes and cilantro, in a beef broth. It’s delicious. I never knew I could like soup for breakfast so much! Don’t be fooled by that coffee though – pretty much all the restaurants serve instant coffee.

Here’s another day I had the soup, but Kirk’s had eggs. Eggs with tomato and onion seem to be pretty traditional too. The white patties you see are arepas – pretty much a little corn patty. They come plain, stuffed or with cheese on top and they are the food I have seen most often. It’s also probably worth mentioning that Kirk and I can both eat breakfast here for $3–$4 total. Good stuff.

This is one of my favorite meals we had, though I don’t think it’s very traditional. We picked a restaurant to go to our first night in Santa Marta, grabbed a cab, and showed the driver where it was located on the map. He headed off in the opposite direction, drove about 20 minutes, and dropped us off while pointing to the left saying “it is there” (in Spanish). We got out of the car and to our surprise, there was a huge food truck area. It wasn’t where we planned on going, but it was delicious. We split a huge pile of grilled chicken, sausage, and beef, with sweet coleslaw on top, pieces of arepa, and a few fresh fries on the bottom. It was more than enough for the both of us and was about $8.

Here we have my real favorite that you can also find just about anywhere. Mango juice with milk. Nearly every menu has different fresh juice options that you can have with water or milk. We decided to try milk when it was suggested to us, and since we were unsure about drinking the water. I don’t know what’s in this, but I’m sure it’s terrible for you. It basically tastes like fresh mango juice and ice cream, and it’s always been served to me in a cup that large 😍.

Here is the meal we shared at La Puerta Falsa, a famous restaurant in Bogota that was founded in 1816, yeah, 200 years old. This is all really traditional food. Hot chocolate served with buttered bread, corn bread, and cheese (it seems to always come with this, and you dip the bread in the hot chocolate); a traditional Colombian tamale with a whole chicken leg in the middle; and Ajiaco, a traditional Colombian soup with corn, chicken, and capers as well as avocado, cream, and rice on the side. We love the tamale, but could leave the soup.

And finally, something not traditional at all, but delicious, this is a meal we had at a French restaurant in Santa Marta. Kirk had a “Seafood Casserole” that tasted like étouffée, and I had garlic shrimp with mashed potatoes, avocado, and fried plantains. SO good!

Other traditional things you find everywhere here that I don’t have pictures of – fried empanadas, papa rellena (a ball of mashed potatoes that are stuffed with meat and deep fried), fried plantains (yum!) , other fried things that I haven’t tried yet to tell you what they are, and then fish with coco rice (like I posted in the last blog).

Tonight we head to a food truck park that is here in Salento. I’m excited to see if the food at this one is as tasty as the one in Santa Marta. We’ll see!

I leave you with a picture of poinsettias that are outside of our hostel room. I didn’t know until today that poinsettias grow up to 15ft tall…yep.