Colombia - The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget - page 531

Ì Café Studio 200m along the main road from Bahía
Suroeste to Aguadulce. The best restaurant on the island,
run by a Canadian-Raizal couple; try anything in Creole
sauce and don't leave without sampling either the
cappuccino pie or the lemon pie. Mon-Sat 11am-10pm.
Old Providence Taste Signposted off the road from
Aguadulce to Santa Isabel in the Pueblo Viejo area (if you
pass a bus stop shaped like an octopus, you've gone too
far). Friendly beachside restaurant serving a fantastic-
value menú for COP$12,000, which includes soup and a
heaped plate of fish or curry crab with all the trimmings.
Daily noon-4pm.
Roland Roots Bar Bahía Manzanillo (Manchineel Bay).
This Rasta-themed bar rocks to a thumping reggae
soundtrack and there are even swings from which to fling
yourself into the sea.

The heart of paisa country is the
metropolis of Medellín , which has
made a remarkable turnaround since
its days as Colombia's murder capital
in the early 1990s, and turned into
an attractive cosmopolitan city. The
picturesque coffee-growing fincas near
the modern cities of Manizales and
Pereira were almost all established
by paisa homesteaders and some
growers have opened their estates to
tourists, who during harvest time can
partake in the picking process. Easily
accessible from Pereira, the incredibly
photogenic village of Salento is the
gateway to some great hiking in the
misty Valle de Cócoro . The so-called
Zona Cafetera , or “Coffee Zone”,
is the base for exploring one of
Colombia's most postcard-perfect
national parks, Parque Nacional
Natural Los Nevados .

5

Tierra Paisa
Nominally a slang term to describe
anyone from the mountainous region of
Antioquia, paisas are alternately the butt
of jokes and the object of envy for many
Colombians. What makes them stand
out is their rugged individualism and
reputation for industriousness. Their fame
dates back to the early nineteenth century,
when they cleared Colombia's hinterland
for farming in exchange for the
government's carrot of free land. Perhaps
the biggest paisa contribution to Colombia
is its role in the spread of coffee.

MEDELLÍN
It's hard to think of a city that was more
in need of a public relations makeover
than MEDELLÍN . When turf wars
between rival drug gangs became public
in the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia's
second-largest city was rampaged by
teenage hitmen, called sicarios , who,
for as little as US$30, could be hired
to settle old scores.

COFFEE AND COCAINE
It's hard to say which of Colombia's two cash crops garners more international attention, the white
or the black one. One thing is for certain: both are synonymous with quality. The country's first
bumper crop was coffee . Colombia is the second-largest producer of hand-picked mild Arabica
coffee after Brazil and the third-largest overall coffee producer in the world (behind Vietnam and
Brazil). High temperatures, heavy rainfall and cool evening breezes make Colombia the bean's
ideal habitat, though changes in weather patterns have led to poor crops in recent years: 7.8
million bags were produced in 2011 following torrential downpours, fungus and flooding, well
below the average of around 12 million.
Cocaine was perceived as an innocuous stimulant until the twentieth century. Two US
presidents, several European monarchs and even a pope were early addicts (and vocal
advocates) of Vin Tonique Mariani, a nineteenth-century liqueur made from coca extract.
The “real thing” that Coca-Cola initially pushed on its customers was cocaine. For Sigmund
Freud, a spoonful of coke each day was the cure for depression. Plan Colombia (see p.494)
has seen some decline in coca cultivation, though coca growers have merely moved on to
producing hardier coca crops that give four times as much yield and grow far faster than old
crops, though the cocaine-related cartel violence that used to plague the cities of Medellín
and Cali has recently been “exported” to Mexico, where drug trade-related murders have risen
dramatically in the last few years.