Cali Day 2 - Saturday

Eating at someone’s house is an experience not to be missed when traveling. Meals contain local fruits and vegetables and breads and meats and there is no possibility one can revert to the safe – and unadventurous – food one would eat at home. And so it proved this morning. Fresh fruit was offered for breakfast – Zaporte – soft pink interior surrounding four large seeds wrapped in a tough brown skin, with a taste a little like Papaya – Apple Guava – crunchy guava that looks like an apple, the texture and crispness of a nut – mandarin – small oranges – Kumis – a drink similar In texture to liquid yoghurt, but lighter in flavor – freshly squeezed orange juice and Colombian coffee. All delicious.

Patricia wanted to visit with her family and Humberto had to take the car to a repair shop to have the exhaust fixed so he and I drove to an area of the city where there were dozens of repair shops and parts stores for cars and motorbikes. A female relative of Humberto’s ran a shop where exhausts are repaired so we left the car in her competent hands and walked to the bus stop for the Mio. The Mio is a recently completed mass transit system that consists of dedicated lanes for air conditioned buses and bus stations with enclosed air conditioned ticket and waiting areas. There are half a dozen routes through the city, so we spent an hour riding the T39 and T41 lines through the city center and the financial district, then south down Calle 7 and back to where we started. Very interesting.

As we got back to Humberto’s house a street vendor drove by on his bicycle with a cooler full of champus. Patricia ran out of the house with a large plastic jug, the vendor filled the jug and we sat down to drink Champus – a delicious drink of corn, pineapple, and several other things (recipe to follow when I find out what exactly is in the drink) and eat lunch before we headed off to visit the Hacienda El Paraiso.

Patricia, Lucero me and Mama Leny (Patricia's mum) are enjoying champus.

Hacienda El Paraiso is the restored house and grounds of the site of a famous Colombian love story (we site in Spanish http://www.inciva.org/) The grounds are lovely and the story behind the house is interesting. Unrequited love because the young lady in the story died.

This is Humberto (Lucero's husband) and Lucero (Patricia's sister) and their son Manuel Jose

The whole group at the entrance to the house and grounds. The house was restored in 1983 and opened to the public in 1988 with period furniture and pictures so it looked as close as possible to it's condition when the family in the story lived in the house.

There were several very large and very old trees in the grounds, this is just one of them.

There were a dozen vendors in front of the grounds, close to the parking lot, being entrepreneurs and taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the visitors. They were selling roasted corn, sugar cane sticks and sugar cane juice, arepas and various fruits. Here Sofia and I are eating "oblea" which is like the crispy covering on an ice cream sandwich, but instead of ice cream the inside was smothered in caramel.

And here are Patricia and Sofia engaged in a duel of corn.