Barrio Nelson Mandela

This morning's adventure took us to Bazurto Market and surrounds. Honestly it was an information overload on the history of this market from is original location, to the government trying to build a new location, but that was unsuccessful so people started making their own area to buy and sell things.

I'm very confident we only saw a small portion of this market. Starting with fruit tasting and a juice once we decided which we enjoyed the most. Colombia is very proud of their fruits and almost all food and drink contain or supported by a fruit of some type. This will have been the third or fourth fruit tasting I've done. Not that I'm complaining at all.

Next we walked the streets around the area, where they explained the history of the area and the way people live and trade here.

We returned into the market area where we did a local dance lesson. A dance from Cartagena called Champeta. Learning about the different styles before trying it out ourselves. Then as a surprise, and because we weren't hot and sweaty enough already, Juan got up to do a mini lesson on Salsa. I sucked at both, but my excuse was I was holding a phone.

We went for a walk through the market stopping off at two places between all the right corridors and smells... Especially the meat and fish area.

First place was a metal recycle area, where a craftsman would repair and build pieces from left over our broken pieces of metal. Like a refurbished oil fryer.

The other stop was at a local artist. We were asked to come up with a phase that he would write out for us to keep. We were having a mental blank so I came up with " Cartagena. Hot days and even hotter nights"... Unfortunately, it was lost in translation and the phrase "Have a Hog Day" was born.Læs mere