THE COLOMBIA I CAME TO KNOW

The Colombia I came to know in the three weeks I was there was not the Colombia terrorized by drug cartels or FARC guerrillas. It’s a country that shared our cultural idiosyncrasies and celebrated their public spaces by filling them with art and beauty. My visit was life-enriching and I was determined to visit the continent again and explore other former Spanish colonies. I wanted to see how much we differ and match their current circumstances.

Here are top 10 discoveries I made in Colombia that fellow Pinoys might find interesting:

Efficient transport system

Their public transport system is efficient. Trains ran on time and were generally clean. The long-distance buses my friends and I rode had interiors similar to that of a commercial airplane. They had unique forms of travel like escalators and cable cars up a hillside neighborhood. And it was all inexpensive.

Street art

Colombia’s street art scene is a beautiful explosion of lines and colors. They can be found everywhere. In cities as well as the countryside, graffiti festooned buildings, bridges, posts, etc. They weren’t just random tags of some streetgang initiates but emotive expressions of life in the country.

Ice Buko

Colombians have their own version of ice buko called paletas de coco. My friends and I couldn’t believe our eyes when a vendor strolled by and held in his hand something in the unmistakable shape and color of the frozen snack. True enough, it was ice buko, which we greedily bought and feasted on.

Mate de Coca

Their popular tea called mate de coca has a low amount of cocaine. In the United States it is illegal in its original form, and it might show up in a drug test. My friends and I were offered a cup each prior to our ascent to a mountain on the Andes range. It was supposedly an effective counter to highaltitude sickness.

Pablo Escobar

In his city of Medellin, Pablo Escobar is a legend and a hero. My friends and I joined a small van of tourists that went on a Pablo Escobar tour, crisscrossing the stronghold of his once powerful cartel. People paid their respects at his and his family members’ graves.

Former neighbors spoke fondly of the community activities and projects he paid for. His surviving older brother, Roberto, who also had a USD10 million bounty on his head at one point as the cartel’s accountant and co-founder, narrated their exploits like a troubadour would Robin Hood’s.

Museum of Sea Dinosaur

Museo El Fosil in Villa de Leyva has just the one item to display, the almost-complete skeleton of an extinct sevenmeter long sea dinosaur, but people still come in busloads to view the oddity.

Coffee haven

Colombian coffee is one of the best in the world. It is nutty in taste, less acidic, and has a virile but curvaceous aroma to it. It’s always offered black in the countryside or tinto as they call it. Order “cafe con leche” if you want to drink it with milk. They call it perico in Bogota, or pintado in other parts of the country.

Public plazas

Colombians love their expansive public plazas. Every city or tiny town has at least one, where people enjoy walks, sit-down chats, and wheeled activities like skateboarding. Where many growing urban centers choose to shrink such public spaces in favor of buildings,

Colombia has maintained the original acreage of most, if not all, of them. The people, in return, show their appreciation by frequenting the plazas and not packing themselves into massive shopping malls to escape the tropical heat.

Dog-friendly country

They allow dogs in their airports—and they definitely abound in great numbers. As a dog person, I was speechless when I arrived at El Dorado International Airport and was immediately surrounded by packs of canines in every shape, size, and color. It looked a lot like doggie heaven to me.

Ms. Universe country

They are as crazy about beauty pageants as Filipinos. In Barranquilla, a major Colombian city by the Caribbean Sea, there is a Miss Universe office, and the pavement fronting it is decorated with the faces of former winners. My friends and I may have spotted Gloria Diaz and Margie Moran among them. A short walk from it is a museum that documented the Colombian version of the Spanish Inquisition. The juxtaposition of women praised for their beauty and persecuted for their “witchcraft” within a few blocks of each other couldn’t have been more jarring.