I returned to the flat from my class and we went off to Poblado with several missions in mind, but only one that we were reasonably confident of completing. In the event we managed all of them, hurrah. It took ages to get there as the traffic was terrible (we had hoped to save time by taking a cab instead of the metro, but got our just desserts). First we went to a tea shop and bought some Colombian looseleaf tea. I can’t say I have high hopes of it, but it is locally grown, the tea shop knew how to store tea, and it should at least be better than the dust-filled ‘Hindu’ brand teabags that we have been surviving on so far (I do have my Pakistani tea for my morning chai but am rationing it carefully as it has to last me till mid-November). So this was the first of the missions which had seemed unlikely to be successful – we had not thought it likely that the tea shop would at least appear to know what it was doing.
The next stop was lunch. We went to a sort of Peruvian place and had ok ceviche and other forms of raw fish with potato, corn, avocado, etc. The servings were immense, and though we only ordered a starter, a main and half a sushi roll between us, there was enough for three. Oh well. It was fine, nothing out of the world but not offensively bad.
The next stop was the most uncertain: we went to the government health clinic and got out yellow fever vaccinations. These last a lifetime, are useful for travel in several countries, and yellow fever is endemic to Colombia (though not in Medellin itself) so it felt wise. So at the clinic I disgraced myself by not following the nurse’s Spanish at all, and in fact managed to tell them that we were Costa Ricans (they must have thought, what na-laik Costa Ricans who don’t speak any Spanish) before realising they had filled out the certificates. So the certificates had to be redone. Anyhow, we are now vaccinated and it was sufficiently painless (both the needle and the experience) that we came out wondering what other vaccinations we should rack up on our travels. Japanese encephalitis, whenever we return to SE Asia, we thought: we do spend a reasonable amount of time in the jungle and JE sounds quite horrific.
The final stop was for excellent filter coffee. I have decided that V60 is probably my favourite technique although I don’t really understand how and why the coffee produced differs from, say, the chemex. I daresay it could be explained to me in excruciating detail if I were ever to ask.
During the night I decided, half-asleep, that a friend of mine was a white supremacist. In the day I am fairly sure he is not a white supremacist, but I am afraid I would not ask him his view of Islam and Muslims.