La Senorita Returns

Anna finally returned from her trip to Latin America. She spent the latter part of it in Bogota, Colombia and sent back some photos.

These are dancers who were dancing in a small plaza. I thought it was a great picture and a fascinating scene.

It was a grueling trip, though she did manage to get upgraded to business class for the trans-Pacific leg both ways. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to do much more than change planes in New York.

This is my favorite series of the photographs that Anna sent: guinea pig races!

It's apparently a popular street entertainment in Bogota - the handler lines up the guinea pigs ...

... and with some coaxing they eventually race toward these plastic bowls and disappear inside one of the openings. People place bets by putting money on top of the bowl they think the guinea pigs will run into. I love this photo, with the guinea pig racing away.

An agua fresca vendor with a tray of soursop, a fruit that is used to make the white drink in the picture. Anna said these vendors are all over the city.

Anna said Colombia is full of fresh and - for us - unusual fruit. This is a granadilla, a kind of passionfruit. If you've never had passionfruit, the texture is sort of like jelly with crunchy seeds. Anna said they looked like eyeballs.

Spanish Jesuits in South America named the plant after the Passion of Christ because they thought the flower of the plant looked like a crown of thorns.

Anna said this was fresh tangerine juice with fried plantains, which are like thick crackers.

A plate of chicharrones, deep fried pork (mostly rinds).

This is a bandeja paisa, a traditional Colombian dish that includes, among other things, rice, red beans, plantain, a fried egg, a wedge of deep-fried pork, and a slice of avocado. Bandeja means 'platter,' and paisa refers to the Paisa region of Colombia. Anna said the avocados in Bogota were huge, silky and full of flavor.

Much of Colombia is high and dry and cool and so the cuisine has a lot of soups and stews. This is a traditional chicken soup with corn, potatoes and capers. The little greenish utensil on the right is used to spear the corn cob in the soup.

The Cathedral of Bogota in Plaza de Bolivar, built in the early 1800s.

Another view of Plaza de Bolivar in the historic La Candelaria district. The area is named after the Inglesia de la Candelaria, a church dedicated to Our Lady of the Candle, a 17th century apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Canary Islands where she appeared to some fishermen as a statue with a candle in one hand.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the late, great Colombian novelist, worked as a reporter for a while in La Candelaria district.

Anna stayed in a small hotel on a quiet street.

The hotel had rooms that were named and decorated for various celebrities. She stayed in the Sophia Loren room.

A Bogota street scene.

Anna said there is graffiti all over the city.

She said much of Bogota looked more like this.

Anna said this is the 'Starbuck's of Colombia.' Both of us remember the old Juan Valdez commercials on TV in which the fictional character would appear with his mustache, white straw hat, donkey and sacks of fresh beans to promote Colombian coffee, 'the richest coffee in the world.'

She said the coffee was indeed excellent.

This is a student protest at a university. Anna said there were several such protests while she was in Bogota and that they shut down various parts of the city. The students are protesting in support of farmers who are angry about free-trade agreements that drive down the prices of their produce - including coffee.

An earlier wave of protests turned violent in August and the farmers are now threatening to blockade roads to prevent food from making it into Bogota and other cities. The farmers are supported by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - the Marxist rebels better known as FARC. So much for the happy, avuncular Juan Valdez!