Adventure Travel in South America

Hot Chocolate a la Colombiana

July 15, 2009 By Danny

The only thing you might remember from Oaxaca, Mexico is Jillian’s famous grasshopper video. Besides crunching on bugs, we’ll always remember the delicious hot chocolate. Steaming and slightly cinnamony it was the perfect start or finish to a day. From street vendors in the morning to cafes in the evening everywhere in Oaxaca there was hot chocolate. Imagine my surprise… no delight… when I found delicious, creamy, sweet hot chocolate in Bogota.

Only in Bogota, one needs to add cheese to the equation. Yes, that’s right, cheese. Our first morning here in Bogota our CS host Marta took us for a walking tour of downtown and ensured that we tried a proper hot chocolate…lets just say I’ve made it my mission to sample as many as possible. So far, so good.

In case you are wondering, here are the steps to drinking delicious hot chocolate in Colombia.

Step 1: Order your hot chocolate with cheese. For those of you trying this at home, you’ll best be served by a soft (think mozzarella) Mexican type cheese. If it comes pre-shredded all the better as this will save you valuable time.

Step 2: If it does not come pre-shredded, chop your cheese up into bits and pieces to be placed in your magical drink. Use your fingers or your silverware, doesn’t matter which.

Step 3: Put the cheese in the chocolate. As you put the cheese into your mouth keep in mind that the cheese is better in the chocolate and if you eat all of it then you will be missing out. Also be sure not to drop the cheese from a high altitude as this will send some of the chocolate onto your shirt…forcing you to do laundry prematurely and wasting valuable chocolate.

Step 4: Drink the chocolate. If you’re cheese is fluffy enough it won’t all sink to the bottom and you’ll be lucky enough to slurp little pieces of semi-melted cheesy bliss in your chocolate filled mouth.

Step 5: Eat the remaining cheese at the bottom. You should use either a fork or a spoon otherwise you risk embarrassment. The cheese will be softer but it shouldn’t be a melted mess, you will likely find the exact same sized bits you chopped up, only chocolatier.

Really, I was skeptical. This is good, I guarantee it!

Isn’t it dangerous here?

July 14, 2009 By Jillian

So here we are, in Colombia. Our first new continent together. This is exciting. This is exhilarating. This is dangerous?

We’d originally planned to skip Colombia. We had thought it was dangerous and decided it wasn’t worth our while. But then we started thinking… upon entering Mexico many people advised us against going. We had a great time. We had a phenomenal time. So why should we skip Colombia if we didn’t skip Mexico?

The more important questions is why do we, as people, typecast entire countries when we know so little about them? All I knew about Colombia before I started preparing to go there was what I learned from watching Clear and Present Danger. Is that really fair, probably not.

So here we are, in Colombia. There are dangers here, just as if we were going to New York or Detroit. There are also beauties to behold…from volcanic mud baths along beautiful beaches to mountain vistas and more whitewater than you can shake a stick at. The people of Colombia are actually rated as some of the happiest in the world (although the statistician in me is at at a complete loss for how one calculates happiness.)

A few weeks ago, we were sitting on the island of Utila in Honduras. This was before we were rocked by an earthquake and before Honduras ousted their president. We were speaking with some people who were headed to the USA in the near future, planning to road trip the east coast in just a few weeks. I asked what their plans held and for the most part there was nothing surprising. But then they said they planned to spend 10 days in New York and just 2 in Washington, DC. I asked why such a short time in a city where all the tourist attractions are free and they told me that Washington was just too dangerous for them…after all, it was the murder capital of the country… in the 1970’s.

Packing for South America

July 13, 2009 By Danny

Our time in the USA quickly came to an end and yesterday we began our trek through South America. While we spent most of the time being stuffed with delicious food (there goes the weight we lost from Central America), we also spent an inordinate amount of time at outdoor equipment stores like REI. In fact we went to two different REI’s in the Atlanta area. After four months of use a lot of our equipment had either failed or begun to fail on us so it was time to exchange and resupply. We’ve added a number of gear reviews to the website if you are interested and as always you can get an up to date list of our pack contents on the gear page.

We traded out clothes that weren’t cutting it, mostly things that were easily torn or didn’t live up to the rigors of travel. For Danny this was a few shirts and a pair of pants. Jillian traded out some undergarments and shirts, added a travel dress and took out a pair of capris.

Because so many people have asked about what is in our packs and how much we actually have, we made a video of how to pack a backpack that will give you a visual of how things fit.

Hot Chocolate a la Colombiana

Isn’t it dangerous here?

Packing for South America

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