Fruit Party Numero Tres

Things have been a bit quiet on the fruit party front.  We've fallen into a groove with our fruits, opting for the familiar (and incredibly delicious/outrageously cheap) mangos, pineapples, and baby bananas.  This combo, with an orange thrown in every once in a while, constitute our daily breakfast smoothie.

Another reason, we've slowed down on our fruit adventure is that we discovered that most of the fruit we see in stores are some variation of Maracuyá.  Like these little guys:

Though the texture was a bit slimy, it tasted delicious, probably our favorite of the passionfruits we've tried so far.  It was sweeter than the others and had a surprisingly spicy after taste of ginger.

Then there was this "experience."  After being thwarted by our own inability to pick a ripe guayabana, we resorted to buying a pre-sliced one from a nearby supermarket.

Before we even left the store, we had misgivings.  The smell emanating from the saran wrap was faintly similar to vomit.  By the time we ate it, a few hours later, the smell had permeated the whole fridge.  After opening it up, we got a close look at the texture - which we tried to capture:

Can you see the slime?!  There are no pictures of us eating it because the only way we could motivate ourselves to eat it was by chowing down at exactly the same time (yes, with a countdown).  I'm pretty sure our response can best be summarized by "No, no, no, no, no!"  We're putting it in a smoothie tomorrow to see if that improves it, but man, as is, we are not fans.  

To end on a positive note, lets talk about avocados.  While not new, the avocados here certainly get bonus points for novelty.  There seem to be four main kinds being sold: Anaheim, Hass, Choquette and Hall.  Every once in a while we'll go crazy and buy one of the big guys (Choquette/Hall), which are easily two pounds and are often as big as a human head.

Evidence:

With these, we've found the best solution, rather than try to eat them in one go is to make a huge tub of guacamole:

This is all from one single avocado!  Also, please note the really fantastic brand name on the tortilla chips.

Birds!

So we did not actually see these guys, but they were the first thing that came up when I googled "cute birds."   And, I thought they'd grab your attention and be a great way to introduce our blog post entirely about....birds! (and, indirectly, about the fact that we are indeed 80 at heart).  In all honesty, the birds (or at the very least watching Matt chase after the birds with our dinky camera) have been a constant source of joy since we've arrived.  And Sunday morning, we got a real treat.  We were awoken at 6:30 by what sounded like a cross between a turkey gobble and a child yelling.  We'd heard the noise before - every once and a while these great flocks of angry turkey-children fly across our sky squawking away in the distance.  But this time, they were close, lighting on rooftops mere streets away!  We immediately threw some clothes on grabbed crackers for our pathetic efforts to lure them to us and went out in search of the mystery birds.  It proved to be a fantastic morning.  While we never got that close to the birds, we did get a few good views.  And, because we were up so early, we were able to see our sleepy neighborhood wake up. We weren't the only people on the street, but we were definitely some of the few.  The lack of background noise from cars, conversations and fruit vendors using microphones to advertise their products meant that often the only sounds we heard were the trilling of birds and the flittering of their wings.  

*This is where we tried to upload a video so you could hear the sound, but couldn't make it work.*

After a pretty extensive internet search, turns out the birds we followed were Yellow Crowned Amazons.  Since our camera is pretty sad, and we're not photographers, I opted to steal pictures from the internet (where noted) to show what we saw.  Hopefully this will be appreciated, as here is a sample of what most of our pictures look like.

While this is more akin to what we actually saw (gracias internet!)

A few others of the morning:

Ruddy Ground Dove:

Internet

Blue Grey Tanager:

Internet

Saffron Finch:

Internet

Black Vulture:

Great Kiskadee:

And this teeny tiny little guy with the best call:

One of our other favorites, that we didn't see this morning, but want to share anyway is this weirdo...

Southern Lapwing:

Internet

Jardín Botanico Part Two

This weekend, decisions we've been putting off - where will we go after October, what kind of jobs, if any, should we be searching for, how we envision the rest of this year unfolding - all came to a head.  The most immediate, what to do after our class wraps up at the end of October, had been the most preoccupying.  The pull of our apartment, the comfort of a navigable city, the complacency of being students...there are many reasons to stay put.  It's always been particularly difficult for me to trade familiarity for unknowns, but passing up this opportunity to travel around Colombia seems like a choice we'd regret.  So, in the beginning of November we've got a month (24 days, really) of travel. We are taking suggestions for places to visit because right now, we have nothing planned.

The semi-paralysis that accompanies my decision making coupled with the fact that we had our apartment to ourselves after a week of living with a fairly insufferable housemate, meant that our motivation to leave home was pretty low.  We did however manage a short trip to revisit the botanical gardens.  It was a much better experience sans book fair and throngs of children.  You guys almost lucked out because our camera was pretty close to running out of batteries.  But, it held out till the end of our adventure.  As a result we have about 100 decontextualized close ups of leaves.  We'll spare you most of them, but here are a few of our favorites of the day.

The Butterfly Garden:

The Succulent Garden:

Pretty plants:

Tree Dinosaur:

And, of course, Matt's Contribution:

Bear dog

This is by far our favorite neighbor. He refuses to be walked by his owners, coming outside but just laying down on the ground despite their tugging and calling. Also, he looks like a little bear.

Parque Arví

Last weekend, we visited a park just outside of Medellin called Parque Arvi.  Having been confined to the city through a combination of laziness and our studies, we were looking forward to the chance enjoy the wilderness.  The way out there was, to our surprise, by way of a thirty minute cable ride.  Our view before departing:

The view from the cable car over a beautiful valley which we have, of course, forgotten the name of.

Despite 360 degree views of untouched nature, we soon learned that once we got to the park, there was very little in the way of true wilderness and almost none of it was open to individual hikers. Most of the park had to be seen with a guided group.  Since we arrived about an hour too early for a tour, we killed time walking around the stalls at the top of the mountain and agonizing over which of the empanada vendors we would visit.  We chose one that looked pretty popular, and them immediately made a spectacle of ourselves when we put aji picante (mild hot sauce) on our food. Before spooning it on, we were warned.  After we didn't heed the warning, all eyes were on us to see how these gringos would react to the obviously unbearably spicy sauce.  After we did not in fact die, and indeed seemed to enjoy it, the woman who had originally warned us went a bit crazy.  We had our picture taken multiple times in various poses: with her, with the empanadas, with the aji, with her father.  We finally had our first taste of fame and loved it. Her father, who spoke incomprehensible spanish, then proceeded to follow us around for the next thirty minutes talking about (we think!) different regions in Colombia and possibly things to be careful of while here. We eventually had to break off our chat to make it to the tour on time, but managed to get one or two last photos together before we left.

Before the hike, which was described as a three hour hike to a lagoon, we were warned that it was pretty long and difficult.  The group even did some stretches together before we got going.  It was not difficult.  The hike meandered slowly up a hill, with our tour guide stopping to point out plants every ten minutes or so. A few of our favorites:

Those shapes on the tree are large bromeliads

The fact that we took pictures of the last two was pretty comical to some people on the group.  As they explained it, these plants are so common it was almost as if I were taking pictures of trash.  The lagoon when we finally got there was a dried pit, but a pretty one.  Here the group stopped for a lunch/snack/drink break to recover from our walk.  Matt and I wandered away for a bit and were quickly told to not leave the group. Here is our lagoon.

The walking tour, while not the solitary hike we were hoping for, proved really fun.  Shortly into it, we were all asked to introduce ourselves and after learning we were American, a nice couple introduced themselves to us and we chatted with them for the next three hours.  Carlos was a photographer, and we ended up having our photos taken many more times that day.

We were instructed to "soft kiss" 

Here I am, exercising cultural sensitivity and respect as I skip down a paved road that has been in place for hundreds of years.  I had been instructed to "skip like a little girl"

The main highlight of the walk was an incredible view looking down onto Medellin as a storm rolled in.  It was beautiful and a great perspective on the city we've been dwelling in for the past month.