Crepes, waffles and the final days in Colombia

We really have loved Colombia. The cities have had a very modernised, more developed feel than much of South America, for me one of the few downsides was the fact that on the northern coast a hot water tap is seen as unnecessary. Now I accept that the temperature is 35 degrees pretty much every day, but stepping into a freezing shower, although refreshing, isn't something I want to be forced into. It is not as if a big black tank on the roof (let alone a couple of simple solar panels) would not be hot in seconds.

This one pretty minor gripe aside the northern coast has a great outdoorsy feel, as I said in a previous blog lots of the squares and streets fill up at night with people eating and drinking, most restaurants also have outdoor seating areas which get pretty crowded at night.



One of my favourites for this was San Pedro, which was on San Pedro square, next to the museum of modern art. Dinner was great, they do very good sushi, as well as fish based and international dishes. I really enjoyed a tuna steak while my fiancée tucked into an apparently very enjoyable pad Thai. What's more you get to enjoy all of this while surrounded by some excellent metal sculptures and a pretty impressive church.

Obviously this sort of environment in the old town is not exactly cheap with the sushi costing 30,000 (11 GBP) and the mains coming in between 40 and 50 thousand (15-20 GBP).

The other thing we really enjoyed in the north of Colombia was the ice cream, frozen yogurt and dessert in general, next to our hostel there was an excellent frogurt place which made the dessert while you waited and in the old town you should visit "la pastelleria" where all of the frogurts (on sticks) are beautifully displayed, although a word of caution, if you take them outside in the heat of the day you have to eat really quickly!

The other thing we finally got around to trying in cartagena was a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles. We'd seen this chain in Bogota but the queue had always put us off. They have 2 huge restaurants in cartagena and on our last day we finally managed to squeeze in. It is worth the visit just to browse the excellent food porn which is provided by their dessert menu with hundreds of different, beautifully lit photos of elaborate ice creams and coffees.

The food itself was pretty good with a selection of savoury pancakes for main course (although we didn't get what we actually ordered!). The highlight was always going to be dessert, we tried the waffles with the arequipa sauce (a dulce de leche, condensed milk based toffee sauce) and vanilla ice cream. The waffles were really good and despite the guilt of knowing that in not a great deal of time I have to squeeze into a suit and get married I thoroughly enjoyed them.

They also served one of the best coffees we had in South America. Weirdly this is not saying much as outside of one coffee shop in La Paz the coffee here has been surprisingly average! In most places the cappuccino is too milky or sweet (for even my tastes), I guess I should have just started drinking the espresso like most of the locals do.

Next stop is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I have to say we will be sorry to say goodbye to Colombia, it is definitely somewhere I want to come back to as I would really like to see Medellin and Cali as well as the more southerly cities we missed out on because of the coffee picking strike.

Pictured below are the sushi and mains from San Pedro, the Crepes and Waffles from Crepes and waffles, the selection of frogurt from "la pastelleria" and my favourite statue from San Pedro square.