More Bogota Discoveries

 More Bogota Discoveries 

One of my favorite ways to explore any new city or town is visit the marketplace. On the second day of our tour, Alejo escorted us to the market in a working class neighborhood of Bogota. As we rode from our hotel to the 7 of Agosto neighborhood, he pointed out that most of the major roads were closed. This occurs every Sunday so that people who live in the city can safely enjoy biking, skating, and running. What a wonderful idea!

 

The market was crowded with locals doing their weekend shopping. Although we didn’t have a chance to wander around on our own, our group stopped by a couple of different vendors to sample local specialties. First of all, we tried lechona. This is a mixture of pork, rice, and peas, all baked inside a pig. It’s not something I ever would have sought out myself, but I’m glad I had a chance to taste it. 

Lechona

Then we moved on to a fruit vendor. Since Colombia is located in the heart of the tropics, there is a continuous season for growing fruit. I was familiar with the guava (one of my favorites), but I enjoyed having a chance to try some less familiar fruits. 

Guava

 

The lulo is a citrus fruit that is grown only in Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama. Another name for this fruit is naranjilla. It looks like an orange but tastes very tart. It’s often used to make juice. 

Lulo

 

I’d eaten the deep pink dragon fruit in various countries but never this yellow variety. 

Yellow dragon fruit

 

I remembered the mangosteen from my trip to Vietnam. It is originally from Southeast Asia. 

Mangosteen

 

From the market, we traveled to an industrial area of the city to see a neighborhood designated as an urban art district. 

Bogota has been recently become supportive of the urban art movement and has decriminalized this activity. I had never really appreciated the differences between tagging and other forms of street art, such as actual murals.  Thanks to Ana, who was both a street artist and a political scientist, we learned to see these urban art forms in a new way. 

 

She explained some of the techniques used to create various pieces (spray paint with enamels, traditional brush work with acrylics, etc.), pointed out political content and references that I would have missed, and shared with us the dangers street artists, especially women artists, face. 

 

I came away with a new understanding of urban art and I hope I will be more appreciative of it when I encounter it in the future. 

 

By the time we finished our street art tour, it was raining and we were starving. Fortunately, our next stop was the Herencia restaurant. 

After gobbling up arepas de choclo (arepas made from the large kernel corn grown in the Andes), I dug into a bowl of ajiaco. The warm and savory chicken and potato soup, served with a side dish of choclo corn, rice, and avocado, was a perfect choice for a gray afternoon. This Colombian specialty gets its distinctive flavor from an herb called guascas that is grown in the Andes.