Marbellous Medellin!

This place has come a long way from the grim days of Pablo Escobar. It has probably the most modern metro I´ve ever ridden, clean streets, low hassle for toutists, friendly locals (even met a guy on the street who owns a Cleveland Indians jersey who gave us directions, how rad). It´s traffic is awful, but has numerous taxi drivers, who, get this, are not allowed to idle in taxi stands. They stand in their car with the engine off, and literally push their car up when they move towards the front of the line. Amazing.

This morning, we had the gut busting local dish known as bandeja paisa. Dish might not be the best way to describe it. It varies a little from place to place, but the meal starts out with some fried and grilled breads with an avocado like dip, then you get a small cup of bean and potato ¨country¨ soup. From there come the main part, in our case ground beef, chorizo, a fried egg, half an avocado, a bowl of beans, a fried plantain, a fried pork crackling, and a twice fried banana. Something like this -



I want the Weight Watchers people to tell me how many points that was. Wow. Tasty though*.

Off to the Caribbean colonial jem (via aeroplane) of Cartagena tomorrrow.

Hasta mañana!

*Anthony Bourdain´s `No Reservations´ recently featured this dish on a trip to Medellin. Check it out if you can.