DumbFunnery

El Thanksgiving

These are arepas. Delicious little devils. They are prepared in different ways, the ones that looked like this at the last place we visited were my favorite. Like little delicious pancakes.

This year for Thanksgiving my fiancé and I were in Bogotá, Colombia. What better feast than some arepas, fruit juices and calentado.

A friend of mine, Juicebox, is from Colombia and got married to a girl who is also from Colombia. Naturally, their wedding was in Colombia.

Here’s something I learned about Colombia which I already miss – they are champions of juice. Not steroids, just … you know, fruit-based drinks.

The juices I got to try while I was there …

• orange (not so crazy)
• blackberry
• lulo (also known as naranjilla or ‘little orange’)
• maracuyá (a kind of passion fruit)
• guanabana (also known as soursop … which is much less fun to say)
• pineapple
• some unidentified reddish one.

For some, like blackberry (which is mora in Spanish) you would look at the list of juices and hear ‘mora is blackberry’ but others like guanabana, maracuyá and lulo the additional information was, ‘there’s no translation, they just don’t have that in the U.S.’

But … why!? Lulo and guanabana are delicious!  (To me maracuyá was delicious in the form of a milkshake, not so much as a juice.) From looking at other people writing about these things, I have had it reinforced that I enjoy more sweet things than most … Other people actually said these juices were too sweet. What the what?

I found an article talking about Coca Cola potentially selling fruit juices available in Colombia abroad but I have not seen them. I will certainly be keeping an eye out now though. From my quick google searching I didn’t see a reason why those fruits aren’t available in the United States but my guess is the fruits don’t travel well. Either that or Colombia is only too happy to lord this over the rest of the world while sipping delicious drinks.

(On the one hand I would be very happy if Coke brought those juices to the US. On the other hand I’d be sad if it was Coke doing it.)

Another fruit we had was grenadilla. A nice couple told us to try this – we assumed it was an orange and skipped right by it. But no, it has a hard outer shell that is easily cracked. My buddy told me the best way to open this fruit is by bopping your friend on the head to crack the fruit open (we used the table), then there’s a spongy sort of covering that you peel apart to reveal … what appears to be alien brains inside. I am open to trying new foods, but I have to admit I am a wuss when the appearance is a little … oh, alien brain-ish I suppose. But we dove in with spoons and this thing was delicious!

Oh Colombia, please export more fruits!

Fun fact: Colombia’s sixth highest export item is flowers. There were greenhouses all over around Bogotá. Another fun fact: your co-workers will make one dumb joke every seven seconds leading up to your departure and right after your return about suspected exported items from Colombia. For them you give 0 chocolate or coffee gifts.