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.