A light breeze has
shaken off the ice crystals a morning fog created on the branches of the poplar
trees, and now they are sparkling in the midday sun: we have come home to a
winter wonderland. About 35cm of snow fell during our month-long absence, so
there is no question that it will be a white Christmas for us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two days ago at this time we had
just said goodbye to our hosts at the ‘Hostal Sayta’, had stuffed our bags in
the trunk of a taxi, and were inching towards the Bogotá airport. Traffic in
the city was horrendous, and even the taxi driver was getting anxious already, but
he visibly relaxed when he found out that our plane was not due to leave until 2 ½
hours later. Once we’d gain the carrera
26, the wide road connecting the city center and the airport 13km away, we’d
be fine anyway.
It was the usual
chaos: intersections where cars, trucks and buses are nosing their way into
traffic moving at a snail’s pace, motorbikes weaving through impossibly narrow
gaps between, bicycles close to the curb, then suddenly a skinny horse pulling
a wagon piled high with recyclables like cardboard or plastic bottles at a trot
in the middle lane, the driver conversing animatedly with his
companion sitting on the coach box beside him: nobody but an outsider like me would
find anything extraordinary in this scene.
Since we are not in a
panic I welcome the opportunity to watch by now familiar sights pass by slowly
one more time. Here is the ‘Corner Café’ where we had had breakfast earlier
that morning and the day before, huevos
revueltos – scrambled eggs – with tomato and onion or ham and cheese, bread, a cup
of tinto – black coffee – for me, two
jugos. These fruit juices are one of the things we’ll miss at
home. Made of fruits we either had known only in
their incarnation available at supermarkets in Canada, the aroma and taste a distant
echo of their true potential, or had never encountered before, they are not
like any juice we had tasted. Pineapple, orange, mandarin, mora (blackberry), strawberry, melon – these were the ones we could
identify. But how about guanábana, tomate
de árbol, lulo (called naranjilla
in Ecuador), ubilla? ALL of them
are extremely tasty, some sweeter, some a bit more tart, just thrown in a
blender, if necessary with a bit of
water or ice to make it liquid enough to drink, with the option of adding
sugar, which we never found necessary. Sometimes we have been given the choice to add milk
instead of water, which would turn it into a kind of milkshake, I
guess, but we didn’t try that.
Further down the hill
we pass one joyeria – jewellery store
– after the other, mostly displaying emerald jewellery in their windows,
Colombia’s most famous precious stone, favoured by pre-Columbian people
already. We had only looked at them in passing, running out of time in the end.
Another change of direction at an intersection, another street: now almost
every store features shoes, the next street clothing, another turn brings us
to electronic equipment. It seems that in Bogotá people want to have the
opportunity to compare products and prices for certain articles without having
to walk long distances. One of the more remarkable streets, for me, was one
branching off the ‘Plaza Simón Bolívar’, where
we found ourselves on the first afternoon of our stay in Bogotá: here, it was
military garb that was featured in store after store on that block: camouflage
pants and shirts, boots, hats, in different colour combinations, the casual
display and sheer amount of clothing suggesting that this was not uniform but
fashion. Or do soldiers in Colombia buy their gear in little shops in the
street? Admittedly, there are enough people in uniform that it could be
possible.
What all blocks have in
common are the food vendors selling empanadas, arepas (a kind of corn pancake), fried bananas, patacones, pancakes made with green plantain
(a type of not-so-sweet bananas), tamales
– fast food northern South-American style. Little restaurants with tipico (typical) foods offer the soups
favoured by Colombians: Ajiaco, made
with chicken, different kinds of potatoes, corn, avocado and seasonings, another soup
made with milk and corn, and, of course, sopa
de mondongo, the tripe soup we encountered on our very first day in Colombia.
All are hearty dishes, having given sustenance to the people of the highlands for
centuries in often challenging weather conditions.
Still caught in heavy
traffic, we inch by shoe shiners – omnipresent in towns and cities all over South and Central America
- well-dressed and coiffured women, men in business suits, and here and there
the very poor. In passing, I catch a glance of two indigenous women in ragged
floral-print dresses, sitting on the pavement, leaning against a house wall,
legs outstretched, two infants snuggling between them. One of the women
unfastens the top buttons of her dress and offers her breast to her little
boy. Such huge contrasts so close together.
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