Showing posts with label COLOMBIA. Show all posts

News

Speaking of bags, there are a couple stunning handmade clutches added to the shop this morning. These are made with a mixture of mola art hand-woven by the Kuna Indians, palm fiber, silk and or cotton. All very well detailed in great quality. It has several smaller compartments inside. Check them out here.

11 comments

More sweets

Just another turn at our favorite coffee shop in town.. Mila. I like the water bottles they've produced especially for the café. The brownie was delicious, and my bag is gorgeous. You can find it here.

3 comments

Fruits en masse

Great thing here in Colombia is that you can get a hold on fresh fruit from close to any street corner. There's always a vendor ready to supply you with sweets in any shape and color and the price is always very good too. Lulo, pineapple, mango, granadilla, uchuva, guanabana, carambola...
But what are these? I forgot to ask and can't figure out which one it is. They're small in size, smaller than a kiwi and the vendor continuously sprayed them with lime juice to keep them fresh.. Anyone knows?

13 comments

Golden

Look what magnificent treasures has arrived to the boat. Delivered by none other than the designer herself. Jade behind my favorite jewelry brand We Dream In Colour is in town with her beautiful little family and last night they took us out for dinner at La Cevicheria.
Her adorable son was moving fast fast fast so this is the one shot I managed to capture of them two. Maybe I'll get a chance to grab another one before they leave..

4 comments

Behaviors of a Black Vulture (also known as Golero or Chulo)

We've seen these birds flying above our heads ever since the first day we arrived to Colombia. Initially thought it was the famous Andean Condor - the largest flying land birds in the Western Hemisphere, which often reaches a wingspan of up to 3 meters/10 ft. But with time we found out that what we had seen actually was, still a scavenger as the condor, but the slightly smaller one called Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus). With a wingspan of 1.5 m (5 ft) the black vulture is a large bird though relatively small to be a vulture.
This bird is common from the southern USA, through Central America and throughout most of South America except the extreme south and parts of the Andes. The black vulture is often found around cities, towns and other habitations where it feeds on refuse. The bare grey head with folds of skin and a warty look that you might see above is an adaptation to its life as a scavenger and besides garbage dump, it also feeds off any size of animal carcass as well as dead fish, eggs or they kill and eat newborn animals. 
Vulture meeting in the park. They usually congregates in large groups.
A squirrel! No, nothing for a vulture, garbage and meat that someone else has killed first is acceptable.
If I was a large bird like that, I think I'd go for a live squirrel. Imagine the tender meat that comes from all that activity running up and down the trees and branches.
Instead you'll find the vulture digging around garbage dumps. Does this make them cowards? They're waiting for someone else to kill the food for them. I guess most of us meat eating humans are just the same.
The walk they walk. They look very gracious when flying with the wide wings spanned out, but when they're down on the ground, they all have a sort of limping movement, giving them the impression of being very very old and tired men.
Apparently the vulture has an excellent vision but no ability to smell - which makes sense, eating dead dirty meat and trash from the dump, I too would like to have zero sense of smell. Another interesting thing to say about these fascinating birds, is that they often enjoy defecating on its legs in order to cool down from a hot summers day. This process is known as "urohydrosis". Exactly that is maybe not a practice to imitate, but there sure is something we all can learn from the beautiful and odd creatures with which we share this planet.

4 comments

An angelic cake

Let us talk about sweets again, you know I love it. 

Every country and continent has their own cakes and bakes that both small and big kids run to the store for. Caribbean is known for coconut cake in hard or soft version, guava cheese and rum cakes. In Sweden the cinnamon rolls are a household necessity alongside chocolate balls as well as the brownie these days. France boasts with exquisite lemon tart, almond croissants, macarons and a wide array of other extraordinary desserts. And in Spain you'll be foolish not to try flan, turrón or crema de limon. 

What about Colombia? Well, the Dulce de Leche is widely used as I mentioned and can be found within and on top of approximately 70% of all dulces and postres, but there comes a time when the flavor of arequipe starts to bore you, at least if you haven't grown up with the taste. When that happens, it might be hard to find anything else of interest - but that's only until you get introduced to these bad boys. 

Let me introduce to you the Pionono de crema. 

What are these things? 

Technically they aren't more than a jelly roll, a sponge cake made of eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder and perhaps vanilla - and then filled with whatever takes the bakers fancy. 

Naturally, you'll find these Piononos filled with dulce de leche/arequipe/manjar blanco - as that's what most desserts are filled with remember. But it can so happen that you run into a Pionono made con crema. Now, this specific cake on the picture doesn't in fact remind much of a typical sponge cake rolled around in a cylinder as you might know them, but it's because it's turned upside down and baked in a slightly different shape. But let's not loose focus on what really is important here: the filling and topping of this cake. 

We were walking on one of the narrow cobbled streets in Getsemani when I heard Alex mumbling "I need something sweet" - when that normally happens, we have like ten minutes to find something before he starts to get moody (diabetes warning anyone?) We walked across the street towards a tiny bodega we've never seen before. "Whatever they've got, no more dulce de leche for today" I responded hurrying after. Inside of the dark mini market with walls stacked with cans of food and bottles of rum we found it. With an angelic presence in white attire they lit up the dark room and we just knew what was on order. Two of those please!!

After that I don't remember much, just that we continued our walk, each mouth full of cake and all of a sudden we looked at each other. What was that? Do we remember the name of this street again? Will you find here if we need more?

After our day in the historic center, we did find another little bodega that served them, though for double the price and with less intense flavor so I guess we'll soon be back in Getsemani looking for the very same tienda.

I've googled the cake and found out that it's pretty hard to find Piononos that isn't filled with dulce de leche. But I think I've finally understood that this rare, but oh so divine filling is a simple mixture of milk, lemon zest, egg yolks, a bit of maizena, a dash of rum, and then topped with a bit of cinnamon.

They might not look much to an unskilled eye, but believe me when I say that the sweet softness of the cake mixed with the flavors of the filling combined with the cinnamon on top are out of this world. I'm also happy to announce that the boat is now in order so I can finally start baking myself again. It's been a while.

3 comments

Creamy ice-cream

So we went back to town to search for that ice cream shop we've heard good rumors about and indeed it proved to be the best one of all we've tried in this city so far. A Venezuelan owner, schooled in the art of ice cream in Italy, has established this gelateria in the heart of the historic center of Cartagena. The ice cream is made with cream and only natural ingredients (the pistachio and the dark chocolate were absolutely delicious and very rich in taste) and the sorbets are done with fresh fruit and no artificial flavors added. Very nice... go there if you ever find yourself in Cartagena. The coffee was great too says Alex. 

Gelateria Paradiso lays between Calle de la Estrella and Calle el Cuartel.

4 comments

Summer in Cartagena

Best days around here are the cloudy ones. It's currently full summertime in South America, which extends from December to March more or less, and it really is incredibly hot. I hear the temperature doesn't change much be it summer or winter, but in the winter it does rain a bit more at least. We've been in Colombia now for almost two months, and it's rained once for like five minutes. 

As it's tremendously important to keep yourself hydrated in this heat (35C/95F) and very high humidity (60-90%), we try to squeeze in as many juice and ice-cream pauses as we can. There's a plethora of fresh and healthy juice bars in town, will show you a few of them later, but so far we've found no ice-cream shop that has stolen our hearts. We had the problem of finding them in the West-Indies too, remember? There are a lot more Ice-cream shops here in Cartagena/Colombia, but still, they all seem to be so and so. 

It's not always a blessing coming from the Mediterranean, because inevitably, you'll always compare with the best there is on the planet on so many different areas. There's still one place to visit though which we've heard some good things about. Would it be possible that we'll finally find the first real ice-cream bar that produces from real cream and milk (or egg!) and natural ingredients rather than yoghurt, water, vegetable oils, skim milk powder or artificial flavors? Will keep you posted on this very important subject...

6 comments

In search for the perfect Dulce de Leche

Sweets and desserts is a weakness of ours. Ice-cream, pastries, cookies, sorbets, buns - whatever that is well made and contains sugar really. Except for perhaps guava cheese or tamarind balls.. Here in Colombia as well as in the rest of South America, dulce de leche (also called Arequipe) is a popular thing to add inside or on top of desserts. You'll find it as an accompaniment to pancakes, inside of buns, cookies or cakes, you can spoon it up from a box in hard version and eat it as it is - or have your waffles floating around in it. In many parts of South America, Argentina especially, the basic dulce de leche is sold in any supermarket, served as a part of desserts in every restaurant and is loved by almost everyone. It's a part of their culture as much as coffee is.

Dulce de leche which literally means the sweet of milk, is similar to what we would call caramel elsewhere though it's even closer to the French confiture de lait. The basic traditional dulce de leche recipe calls for nothing more than milk sweetened with sugar, but the quality and way of preparing it differs naturally from place to place, kitchen to kitchen. It's the sort of thing that is absolutely divine if done right, but can also be a mere dull sugar bomb if you're unlucky. The real good ones I've tasted in my life consist also of vanilla, a bit of salt, and even cinnamon at times. 

Restaurant Crepes and Waffles gets 2 out of 5 dulce de leche stars from us today. The waffles were good but the caramel offered merely a basic sweetened-condensed-milk-in-the-micro-oven-kind-of-taste. Best in town so far must have been that cake we had the other week at Mila which could reach a 3,5 to be fair. 

If you'll ever try your hands on making your own dulce de leche, I would recommend making it with real whole milk and add your own sugar rather than using canned sweetened condensed milk which so many websites suggests. And don't forget to add a good amount of fresh vanilla seeds, at least that's what I would do. Am going to experiment with my own version and will let you know how that goes.

5 comments

A home cooked meal

Last night, we went for a walk in Getsemani with our new Italian, Basque and Swiss friends - a group of amazing guys we've learnt to know and who are soon going to sail from here towards Venezuela. 

While strolling on the cobbled streets of the little neighborhood, we felt a strong but lovely smell of garlic coming out from one of the two story buildings. Aaah the alluring flavor and scent of local food! Initially as a joke, Ricardo and I ducked our heads through the open door and asked if there was a table available for dinner. "Si! Si! Bienvenidos niños!" - a dark female voice responded from the depths of the steamy, but beautiful old colonial house. 

Well inside, we were seated in the living room and were quickly served a delicious soup as a starter, followed by a meal of pork and rice. Tamarind juice accompanied the meal and the beers we ran out and picked up from the neighboring mini market. A home cooked dinner was served, beers on the table and in an unexpected but curious little place with a table full of happy good people. What more can one ask for! The unpretentious hospitable style of Latin American people is so refreshing. And given that we were asked to pay 5.000 pesos each ($2,50 USD) - it would have been hard to find a better and friendlier deal elsewhere.

The whole family was part of the cooking and serving procedure and if I counted right there were at least three generations, four cats and two dogs living under the very same roof.

Grandma, the boss, wasn't at all that fearsome as she might look in the picture at the top.
And this is our crew minus moi. Here with a sweet lady/owner of a bar called La Cental Antillana, also in Getsemani where we popped in for a drink after dinner.

3 comments

In the move

Such a busy town. Not like Bangkok, New York city or any other major apple in the world, but having spent a fair amount of time in the Caribbean this is enough to tickle my senses and feed inspiration to my mind.

Boys playing football, vendors hauling out their goods, drug dealers openly promoting their offers, bike boys picking up clients - lending their back as a protection through the ride, tour buses packed with camera toting tourists, yellow cabs whistling for your attention, hipsters skating down the rail, laughing couples clinging on to each other, horse drawn carriages trotting down the cobbled streets, beer bottles being opened.

Whatever hustling is going on around you, it injects a sense of being. That this world is alive. It lends an opportunity - to be as anonymous as you'd wish, quietly disappearing in the masses for a moment - or as occupied and as busy with it as one is willing. 

I know when we're done here we'd long for days and weeks of peace and tranquility on a humble quiet beach far from voices and noises - but for now it feels good being part of the hustle. Always always good to see things in movement, a progress being made, a goal whatever goal it is, being reached. Life goes on, whether we like it or disagree. The world keeps moving. We all have the brilliant choice of being a part of it or not.

6 comments

Cumbia


Cumbia is the sort of energetic traditional Colombian music you hear from every street corner. Similar to salsa but it has a longer pause between the first three and the last three beats, giving it a slower feel and isn't generally as showy a dance as salsa. Cumbia was born in Colombia's Caribbean coastal region, from the musical and cultural fusion of Native Colombians, slaves brought from Africa and ultimately mixed with the Spanish influences during colonial times. Here's another very popular cumbia tune.

P.S: I just changed domain of our market to shop.worldtourstories.com and you can now find a quick link to it on the lefthand side here on the blog.

I hear some of you have hard to find the links in the text of this blog. Are they too unclear? Just hover over the bold letters when there are any, like on the four links above, click on them and you'll get to the referred site.

7 comments

Monchila

Been throwing an eye at these traditional Colombian bags since we arrived to this country a month ago but been hesitant to buy as I hadn't yet found the right color/pattern combined with the right length/size. But finally I ran into the right dealer today who understood exactly what I was looking for and am now a happy owner of a beautiful handmade Monchila bag, traditionally crafted by the Wayuu indians in the Northern part of Colombia. Loving the bright rave colour scheme of this specific one..

6 comments

Late night shot

One of the many things you told me that you enjoyed most with this blog, and something that many of you seem to want even more of, was more photos. It's not often that I post images taken with other people's cameras, but it could sometimes be a great idea perhaps so you can see how our life looks like through the eyes of others? This is a snapshot from the end of my birthday evening, with one of the lovely ladies we got to know over a few beers and crispy mojitos. Great night yes sir.

6 comments

One night in Cartagena

Went to so many different places and holes in the walls last night that I lost counting. At Cafe Havana we made some new friends from UK, Romania, Austria and Switzerland with whom we spent the rest of the night and early morning. We also managed to nearly get arrested by some street cops at one point, but that's another story. Glad for the cloudiness of this day as my head is hurting bad bad bad.

4 comments