Cacao and Coca

So, cacao is the plant used to produce chocolate.  When we visited San Jose del Guaviare, we visited the farm of Wilmer Ramirez Riaño, who is literally one of the people who wrote the book on birds of the state. Wilmer grows cacao.  I posted this on facebook, but I thought it might be interesting to preserve it here too.

Cacao pod broken open to show the seeds.

Cacao pod growing directly from the trunk of a tree

Cacao flower

Wilmer kindly harvested a cacao pod for us so that we could try the seeds.  The white fleshy covering of the seeds was sweet/tart and delicious eaten raw (although it tastes nothing like chocolate).  Normally the seeds are fermented before being roasted and processed to become chocolate, but I crunched one of the seeds (because why not?) and discovered that it had a solid texture and dark taste that I could almost imagine was chocolatey.

Coca is another Colombian crop. Coca leaves are traditionally chewed by the indigenous people of the region to help with altitude sickness, and for a little boost similar to drinking a cup of coffee. But of course, coca leaves are also refined to create cocaine.

Coca was extensively grown in the Guaviare region during the years of the troubles, both by groups aligned with FARC / ELN, and by right-wing paramilitary groups. Local farmers were caught in the middle, pressured to grow coca even if they didn't support either side. In fact the father of our local guide, Wilmer, had to abandon his farm outside of San Jose del Guaviare when he refused to grow coca and rumours started circulating that he supported the other side of the conflict.  His life and the lives of his family were at risk. (After a year as displaced people near Bogota, they returned and sold that farm. Wilmer's father later bought land elsewhere.)

Wilmer's in the blue-grey shirt at the centre of the photo.

Other farmers made different choices in difficult circumstances. On our first day of birding in Guaviare, we visited an 'eco-finca', whose owner farms part of his land and preserves forested areas in the rest. He now hosts 200 visitors monthly (often in large groups) for birding, retreats, and environmental education programs.

Harvey's not sure about the peacock. The farmer had a number of exotic birds and beasts in his farmyard.

Many farmers like him grew coca during the troubles -- the money was good, and like Wilmer's father, you could get in trouble if you refused.  Of course, complying could bring trouble too. US-sponsored helicopters sometimes showed up to dump defoiliant all over your fields -- followed by a helicopter gunship shooting everyone who fled.  The assumption was that anyone associated with a coca field was FARC.  (Funny how only armed guerrillas don't want to bathe in Roundup, or might feel threatened by a helicopter spraying bullets and toxins).

As numerous Colombians pointed out to us, cocaine use is rare in Colombia. Without demand from the US (and other Northern countries), there would be no drug trade here.

So what was Colombia like?

The first question I was asked about our trip was simply "So what was Colombia like?"

Ironically, despite the 16 days we spent in the country, the answer is kind of "I don't really know?"   

After our initial day in Bogota, we spent our two weeks in Colombia in a 'birding bubble', travelling from nature reserve to nature reserve from pre-dawn to post-dusk every day. Our schedule was preset and our time was not our own, so my general observations on the country are limited to what I could see outside the car windows, what I could glean from non-birding conversations with our English-speaking guide (who was generally Not That Interested in non-birding topics), and what little non-birding life we experienced in restaurants and on the streets in-between birding activities.

So, what did I gather?

My initial impression was that Colombia was a richer country than Mexico, which we had just left.  The streets looked cleaner, the buildings better maintained, and there was less visible poverty on the streets of Bogota. 

View from our hotel window on Day 1

Downtown Bogota

Touristic street in historic Candalaria district of Bogota

More Bogota street art

But a quick google showed that this was an optical illusion.  Mexico's GDP is more than 4X that of Colombia's, annual average income in Mexico is ~2X greater, and the Gini Coefficient (a measure of how concentrated wealth is in each country) is worse in Colombia than Mexico (so you can't argue that Mexico is technically richer but only because there are a few really rich people artificially driving up the Mexican stats). 

What's going on?  I think a few things:

• We somewhat inadvertently booked a high end birding tour, which meant that our host company arranged for us to stay in luxury hotels in the best parts of town (our Bogota hotel was 2 blocks from the Canadian Embassy for example). In cities, our drivers were careful to avoid 'bad' areas (as we learnt in conversation with our guide in our last city, Pereira).
• It seems that wealth (and modernity) are more unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas in Colombia than they are in Mexico. In our recent travels through rural Mexico, for example, it's now unusual to see working horses (hauling things, pulling plows, being ridden as transportation).  That's not true in Colombia.  In fact, we actually saw a mule train being loaded with construction materials on our last full day of birding. This was treated as normal by our guide, as he simply made a comment about how much tougher mules are than horses.

 

Mule train being loaded

 

Moving cattle

• Cultural differences: Maybe cleaning up public trash and keeping a tidy house and yard is valued more highly in Colombia than in Mexico? Even the illegal houses built by the roadsides in Colombia appeared relatively well-kept. (Sorry, no pictures. I didn't think to take any!)
• There were things we didn't take into account in our super-brief and superficial assessment of the relative wealth of Colombia and Mexico -- for example, motorcycles flood the streets in Colombia, and in conversation we learnt that both of our 'main' guides (Ramon and Daniel) don't have cars -- they ride motorcycles as their main transportation. And using a motorcycle isn't just something young men do -- we saw people of all ages on bikes including mothers with young kids, entire families, older women...it's the default mode of personal transportation.  Motorcycles are much cheaper than cars.
  
  Motorcycle parking at the University we visited in Villavicencio. The lot was full of motorbikes when we arrived. These are just the few remaining as we were left after the work day had finished.

Other general impressions of Colombia?  Well, I didn't like the food nearly as well as Mexican food.  

The most distinctly Colombian food that we encountered was the arepa, a corn-cassava flatbread that accompanied almost every meal.  Arepas varied a lot from small fried heart-shaped appetizers (served with a mild tomato-onion sauce) to rock hard toasted lumps (served beside beans), to delicious cheese-filled tortilla-like breads. But overall, the arepas we were served were mostly pretty forgettable. 

Which also describes many of the meals that those arepas accompanied. Traditional Colombian food (at least what's served in restaurants) is meat heavy, and often seemed to consist of a relatively plain piece of meat or fish, french fries, some fried plantain, an arepa, and maybe a salad.  In the Andes region beans showed up, but these were generally served with a generous side or topping of chicharron (deep-fried pork skin/meat) and sausage. With plantain and maybe eggs and rice. Vegetables other than avocado were a rarity. 

On the other hand, the fruit and juices were amazing!  Breakfasts usually included things like fresh melon, grenadillo (a type of passionfruit), pineapple, and ripe papaya. Juices were a continual treat. It was normal to have 5 or 10 choices including blackberry, melon, pineapple, mango, mandarin, and maracuyo (another type of passionfruit).  The real standouts though were the exotic amazonian fruit juices: lulo and copazu.  Lulo is tart and citrusy, copazu is flavourful and impossible to describe (and is, apparently, a fruit related to the cacao plant.) I had copazu every chance I had, once I'd tasted it, which sadly generally meant forgoing a coco-lemonade (a coconut lime milkshakey juice, also delicious).

Snacks were also better in Colombia than they were in Mexico. In Mexico it's frustrating to try to buy snacks for a bus trip or a hike -- at least in grocery stores or convenience stores.  There your choices are chips or peanuts covered with a crunchy sweet coating, and maybe lime/salt uncoated peanuts. Granola bar / Kind Bar types of snacks are unknown -- the best you can do is a packaged cookie.   But in Colombia our guide was easily able to find nut/fruit mixes, mixed nuts, and peanuts!  Much nicer for a top-up on the go.

But other than the fruit juice and snacks, I'd much rather have Enchilada Suizas, Tacos, or a nice Mole than most of the Colombian food we tried. 

I'll leave general observations of Colombia there for now because this post is getting pretty long, and I don't have any photos to illustrate any of the food issues (note to self -- start becoming one of the bores who photograph everything they eat). Maybe my next post will be more colourful.

Our birding trip to Colombia: endurance edition

Harvey and I returned to Canada on Sunday March 1st, after a whole month travelling in Mexico and Colombia.  I wrote 4 blog posts about our first two weeks in Mexico. So, why no blog posts for the last two weeks?

Short answer: OMG. Birding trips are exhausting.

Harvey and I have done day trips with birding guides in Mexico, Germany, Canada, and the US. Our longest continuous stretch was a 4 day specialty birding trip in Germany, where "4 days" meant two solid days of birding preceded by a meeting day and a wrap up morning.  

Our Colombia Birding trip was 14 solid days of bird-watching, preceded by a day tour of Bogota and a slower wrap-up morning before catching a plane.  The latest start time for those 14 days was 6 am and we got back to our hotel rooms as late as 9 pm.

The birding was incredible.  Between the two of us, we observed 421 species of birds in Colombia (90% or so of which we saw, not just heard).  Each of us had 327 'lifers', or birds that we saw for the very first time on this trip.  Many of those birds are spectacular.  I can add more of Harvey's photos later, but here are links to internet photos of few of the most memorable:

• Hummingbirds: 
• White-booted Racket-tail: The male of this tiny hummingbird species has a long tail with a 'racket', just like the impressively large MotMots, which is endearing all on its own. But racket-tailed hummingbirds also have fluffy white feathers on their legs, giving them fluffy white trousers!  Hands down the cutest bird going.
• Violet-tailed Sylph: On hummingbirds, the colours that you see are 'structural', created by light interacting with the physical patterns of their feathers. That's why you'll sometimes see an astonishing flash of bright metallic pink when the light catches the throat of an Anna's Hummingbird just right, while at other times you just see the throat patch as being 'dark'. That's why photos of this stunning bird don't really do it justice even if it's easy to see its dramatically long tail.
• Purple-throated Woodstar: When I first spotted this beautiful little bird I mistook it for a huge bumblebee moving from flower to flower on a large flowering shrub.  Nope, despite its striped rump it's definitely a hummingbird.
• Tanagers:  In Vancouver, our only tanager is the bright and beautiful Western Tanager.  They have a few more in Colombia (apparently 179 species?)  We did not see anything like all of these colourful birds, but we saw more than 40.  Which seems negligent of us, but many of these spectacular bird species live only in very specific areas. They also tend to travel in groups high in the forest canopy, making them hard to spot.  
• Rarities: Andean Potoo!  Potoos hunt insects at night and spend their days entirely motionless, relying on their excellent camoflauge for safety.  Honestly, in person they look exactly light tree branches, lichen spots and all.  The Andean Potoo was thought to be possibly extirpated from the region near Bogota until our local guide, Freddy, found this nesting bird last year. 
  
  (If I posted the zoomed out version of this photo, there's no way that you would be able to pick out the bird. From a moderate distance, it looks entirely like a broken off stump.  The nest is a hollow on the top of the post. Freddy showed us photos from last year of a baby poking its head out from his Mom's belly, and thinks that the bird shown here is sitting on an egg).

Over the next few days I'll be posting additional thoughts (and photos) from our time in Colombia, but I thought I'd give you all a quick update now that I'm back in Canada (and a little less jet-lagged).

What things cost in Mexico -- 2026 edition.

 It's always interesting to find out what things cost when you travel.   Here are a few random observations from our two weeks in Mexico, where $1CAD = 12.6 MXN Pesos as of today:

• Cost of two hours in a cheap hotel, as per signs posted out front:  150 pesos ($12 CAD) in Xalapa, 100 pesos ($8 CAD) in Papantla, Veracruz..  Papantla is a small city, gateway to the ruins of Tajin, and home to the astonishing Voladores. I suspect that in Papantla (pop 160,000) you might want to budget an additional 100 pesos to bribe the desk clerk to keep their mouth shut about your illicit tryst. In a place that size everyone knows everyone (or at least, knows someone who knows you).
  
  Los Nichos, the most distinctive pyramid at the ruins of Tajin
  
  
• Nightly charge for the best hotel in Papantla: $831 pesos ($65 CAD).  The Hotel Tajin has seen better days (perhaps in the 1920s?) but is centrally located and has a lovely patio.
  
  
  
• Cab fare to the bus depot from the Hotel Castropol in Mexico City: $48 peso ($4 CAD), as booked through the DiDi ride-sharing app in 2026.  In 2022, we paid $250 pesos for this same trip using a cab called by our hotel.  I don't mind paying tourist prices for things (what else are tourists for?), but 5X the going rate seems a bit extreme. 
• Enchiladas Suizas: outside of the capital, typically $90 pesos ($7 CAD) a serving. Enchiladas Suizas is a dish of 4-5 tortillas wrapped around shredded chicken, bathed in salsa verde, and then baked with a topping of cheese.  A reliable and tasty choice for a meal.
• Fancy meal in the best restaurant in Papantla: $600 pesos ($48 CAD) The meal included an artesenial beer for me, a fancy smoothie for Harvey, and Harvey's delicious entree of a whole fish baked in a savoury vanilla cream sauce (and a less memorable entree for me). The restaurant had live entertainment and at one point the the whole staff sang the local version of 'Happy Birthday' for someone celebrating with her friends and family.
  

Vanilla is native to the area around Papantla

• Two Chicken Schwarmas, two lemonades, and Babaganoush: $600 pesos ($48 CAD) at a low-end Lebanese place in the fancy Mexico City neighbourhood we stayed when we returned o the capital for a few days before leaving for Bogota.
• Freshly made yeast donut: $20 pesos ($1.60 CAD) in Xalapa and in Mexico City. Both donuts were super-fresh, and very tasty. In general I find most Mexican pastries kind of dry, but donuts are a different story.
• Mexico City Metro or Bus Fare, unlimited distance: $5 pesos for the Metro, $6 for the bus ($.40/.50 CAD).  No transfers, but who's complaining at that price?
  

The metro does get a little crowded at rush hour

• Private taxi from central Mexico City to / from Teotihuacan (1.25 hour trip): $323 pesos, plus $110 pesos for road tolls each way from the DiDi ride-sharing app in non-peak hours). ($35 CAD total) We've done this trip by public transit in the past for far less, but our CDMX hotel was inconveniently located for transit, our backs were bothering us, and we're richer than we were in when we first visited the archeological site in1995.  
  

We really need to up our selfie game. (Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan)

• Our most expensive meal in Mexico: $1027 pesos ($81 CAD) Sadly, this is what we paid for the the perfectly-okay-but-nothing-special tacos and lemonades that we had at the airport while we waited for our flight to Bogota.  I’d almost forgotten about price-gouging in airports, given that most Canadian airport authorities have taken measures to eliminate ridiculous prices. Thank you Canada!

Anyway, that concludes my blog posts about our two weeks in Mexico.  I intended to write more often, but life is busy when we’re travelling, and it’s tiring to operate in Spanish when your fluency is as low as mine (A2, according to both the Babel and Duolingo language apps). 

On to our next adventures in Colombia, where I expect we’ll be birding from dawn to dusk most days!

When travel doesn't feel like an adventure

 You could say that we are old hands at at travelling around Mexico.  This trip is our 7th.   We stayed in an all-inclusive resort once on a family visit, but we made the other trips independently, travelling around the country by car (once), but mostly by bus and combi (shared taxi) the other times.  On one of those trips we stayed with a family while studying Spanish 4 hours a day, on another we studied Spanish for a week while we lived in our own rented house for a month. Twice we've rented our own place and at least occasionally shopped and cooked our own meals.

And yet....on pretty much every trip there comes a moment. For me that moment was the day we arrived in Papantla, shortly after we arrived.  I was hot, discombobulated, weighted down by carrying all of my valuables on my person because our hotel room seemed sketchy. We'd just had the oddest pizza of our lives in the busiest pizza restaurant in town (roast cauliflower, carrots, peppers, and onions with a whole lot of melty cheese on a decidedly non-thin crust) when we were accosted by a stranger with a small child that he insisted we kiss.  I couldn't understand a world he said other than "besar", but Harvey could and apparently it was a shakedown for 50 pesos.  

I was done.  All of this was too strange, too overwhelming, too hard to understand. I wanted to be home, where I knew how things worked and I could follow more than 20-80% of conversations (depending on the speaker, the subject, and the context).

But....there is no quick retreat from Papantla!  Here you're at least an hour from the nearest small airport (I assume there's one in Poza Rica), and 5 hours from Mexico City. And besides, we had another week in the country before we were scheduled to move on.  So, return to the hotel room, lighten the backpack to the essentials, have a drink, relax for a few minutes on the lovely deck attached to our room....then venture out again and suddenly the world looks like a different place.  

We finished the day by touring the local art museum that features the works of honoured son of the city Teodoro Cano (artist and creator of the frieze that adorns the city square, former head of the art department of the University of Veracruz in Xalapa). And then listening to the Jarocho music and watching the Friday night dancing in the city square. Sometimes all you need to find adventure again is a little time.

Xalapa Veracruz

 Huh.  I just checked out my blog entries from 2022, and it looks like I didn't write a single thing about the two days we spent in Xalapa (pronounced Halapa) on that trip.  Surprising!  It was one of the highlights.

Xalapa is located in the mountains between Mexico City and the Gulf Coast, is the capital of the state of Veracruz, and is home to the University of Veracruz. All of that makes the city of roughly 800,000 a bustling place with a moderate climate.  The historic centre of town is pretty, there are a lot of parks and greenery all over, and, as Harvey likes to say "the town is clean and the people look happy".

Parque Juarez -- Xalapa's central square

Central church getting a touch-up

Historic State Government Building

Busy downtown street in the evening

Random residential street

Courtyard with restaurants near our hotel

Honestly, while the city has some things to offer tourists, mostly Xalapa just feels comfortable -- not too big, not too small, lots of cultural events, some appealing-looking bookstores (if only I read the language more fluently), a big central library, posters for yoga classes, lots of coffee shops and bakeries, and a superfluity of pizza restaurants.

Biblioteca Carlos Fuentes

I don't know how to capture this visually, but the number of Italian restaurants in the centro is truly ridiculous!  We kept searching google maps for places to eat, particularly for dinner in the evenings, and most of our choices were coffee shops, Mexican places that closed by 5:30pm, and pizza places. Honestly, there are at least 3 within a block and a half of our hotel.

Despite the restaurant issue, Xalapa feels like somewhere that I could imagine living (if I and the world were different).

Somehow we're in Mexico again

It all started with the idea that we travel to Colombia to go birding.  As we started to make that idea into a plan, we discovered that our best flight to Bogota included a change of planes in Mexico City.  Suddenly our plans included two weeks in Mexico.  Bonus feature of this plan -- the elevation of Bogota is 2640m and we live at sea level.   Spending some time in CDMX (elevation 2240m) beforehand would give us some time to adapt.

We've been to Mexico City before, and looked forward to spending some more time there after our last abbreviated visit. But.....

Mexico City is big, it's crowded, and it's a little overwhelming.  Don't get me wrong, we saw some amazing things in our first two full days in CDMX.  

  

Palacio Bellas Artes.

 

Museo Vivo del Muralismo

Museo Nacional de Antropología

But we were also a little over-confident about travelling to Mexico after having been here 6 times before, and we neglected to refresh our memory on a few practicalities.  So we got ripped off on our taxi fare on arrival (we paid about double what we should have), messed up the activation of our Mexican SIM cards, and ended up eating some mediocre meals.  Oh, and I didn't spend enough time on my Duolingo listening exercises and had trouble understanding what anyone was saying.

Nothing terrible, but I wasn't displeased to leave for Xalapa on Day 3.