Santa Fe De Antioquia, Colombia

May 5th, 2009: An hour or so bus ride we arrived at the town of Santa Fe De Antioquia. It suppose to be the oldest town in the region – now the real question is…how many regions are there in Colombia because I am beginning to hear this quite a bit lately? It was a peaceful place where I didn’t have to worry about saving lives or fighting villains. We walked the streets attempting to get lost but the town was much too small to experience such a feat. So we followed the local trails that lead us into the woods. Here we witnessed a few cows when I was hoping for something more exotic. One seemed to be quite anorexic. Perhaps this was a way for him to save his own life from the flesh eating humans who is patiently waiting for him to gain more poundage before its slaughter.

One thing about traveling where you don’t know their language is that you really never know what you ordered. That is unless you are conveniently at a McDonald's or some other sort of fast food restaurant with the number system that dictates what you are getting by seeing the beautifully presented, sometimes falsely advertised meals. But when this isn’t the case, you need to leg it (attempting to break away from the cliché, “wing it”).

Trying to keep the conversation simple with the server at the restaurant, I ordered a tamale. She followed my request with a string of quickly spoken Spanish words describing what was in it. I only understood one word…tamale. So instead of walking through every word she said and still not understand, I looked at the others and gave them the…big eyes - a common signal for help. My friends were as lost as myself since their translation was every animal except for the guinea pig. So I pulled a practice that senior citizens have mastered and kept nodding my head as if I understood what was being said - thinking whatever meat was in it, I should…be able to eat it. When the tamale reached my table, it looked as how I thought a typical tamale should look and after taking a few bites, I was quite satisfied on my order of simplicity.

A third into the tamale, I approached a questionably large squared morsel about 1 ½ inches in diameter and thought, “is this a tofu tamale?” How unique, I never ran into one of these. So, I opened up and squeezed this cube in my mouth. My teeth easily sliced through this mass. At this point I realized it wasn’t tofu and quickly determined it was a supersized piece of fat. Not wanting to spit it out at the table nor in the paper thin napkin squares, I chewed and chewed and chewed, thinking I could get it down.

This fatty morsel managed to produce a massive amount of saliva which I was unable to swallow without triggering the gag reflux. I held the napkin under my mouth, as I dumped the contents - looking as if I stealthily vomited into my hand. Wrapping it in a multitude of mini paper squares, I sat it next to my plate wiping the excessive pool of fluid in my hands on my cloth napkin - the top of my socks. There the chewed wad of fat rested on the table as it continued to soil the napkins as if it was a wound that would not stop bleeding. Mental note: Don’t order by the numbers…it makes life too simple.