I was excited to have Colombia be my 132nd country for a number of reasons, firstly it would be a new tour destination for YPT. It was a country I have always been obsessed with, everyone I knew who had been loved it, and of course, I wanted to sample the street food of Colombia.
Stop one for us was the capital city of Bogota, and like the rest of the country now brimming with tourists now flocking to what was formerly one of the most dangerous capital cities on earth.
As soon as we started to walk around the old town I could see there were food carts and street food galore throughout the archways of this old town. With the first thing that drew my attention being is a picture of Mick Jagger on the side of a cart selling some sweet kind of wafer known as “obleas”, which literally means wafer in Spanish. So the story goes that many moons ago Mick Jagger, yes the Mick Jagger brought one of her sickly sweet wafers, dropped a $200 tip from which she purchased 2 more carts and then became the undisputed queen of all things street wafer of Bogota.
The food itself? Well, it was like when you have an ice-cream with sauce and a wafer, but without the ice-cream. Not bad, but I’d rather have it with actual ice-cream if I had the choice….
Do you like to blow things up? Yes of course you do, who doesn’t? It was suggested that we go to play “tejo” a game that involves throwing rocks at explosives, which then, well, they explode. I might be oversimplifying it, but in essence that’s what you do, all washed down with the local beer “Poker”, because beer and explosives go together like peas and carrots! Tejo and beer was a great way to spend an evening, with my owning regret being where the tejo ring/arena was, was situated in the fish market area with a number of restaurants offering fresh ceviche, which I never got to try.
As evenings tend to go in most places, and with Bogota being no different nights days that start sightseeing often end up at clubs and bars, which results at times in nighttime hunger solved by the trusty food cart. In Bogota, the drinkers food of choice is mixed cow intestines called “chunchullo”, which is fried, seasoned, and served with bread. Not being drunk enough for that I went for a chicken kebab with a baked potato at the top!
Overall found the street food of Bogota fabulous, I managed not to get sick, and in Colombian terms, it was at least on par with Cartagena (which deserves its own article). Oh! And I also discovered Colombian Irn Bru, but again more about that later.
Big thumbs up for street food of Bogota!