My first day in Cartagena was not so great, however, the next day was so much better because we ate our way through it. 😆😁
The day started with a tour of The Real Cartagena but before I blog about this, we need to talk about Colombian food.
O-M-G! We ate until it hurts. The food is so enriched with African culture and oh so flavorable.
So let’s start with breakfast.
PATACONES CON QUESO COSTENO
Fried plantains with a soft, salty white cheese called costeño. The plantains are fried twice in a garlicky oil concoction. They’re fried once whole, then they are smashed into a pancake and fried again to a golden crisp.
El matrimonio
Guava and salty costeño cheese make quite the pairing! You have to take a bite of each of them together and they really do complement each other. But man, that guava paste is uber sweet!
Jugos de fruta
Fresh juice of oranges and lime. So refreshing!
Snack or Lunch
Depending on how you want to call it, our next meal was sampling different types of sweets with cazabe.
Cazabe is a type of flat bread
Then we saw the fruit cart and nearly lost it all, but we resisted
However, we did stop for another refreshing drink of Lulo and passion fruit. Oh, and our guide did spike it with Colombia rum.
Lulo looks like and feels like a small orange tomato. The fruit has a citrus flavor, sometimes described as a combination of rhubarb and lime.
The juice of the lulo is almost always used as a drink since it is usually too strong in flavor to eat.
Dinner
Lastly, we topped off our day with fried snapper with coconut rice and plantains.
I am going to tell you something…I had the same dish last night as well. We had a choice of chicken but why come to a port city and not eat seafood 🤔🙄
To finish it off, we had Limonada de Coco (Coconut lemonade)
Did I mention all this food was all in one day. The good news is we walked it off in 80° F heat and humidity.