Grocery shopping in Medellin, Colombia

Yesterday was a day of rest...up until we had to climb the hill back up to the house where we've been staying!

The city of Medellin is in a valley, but the suburbs have grown up into the very steep hills of the surrounding mountains. So it's not bad walking down to the grocery store, but walking back up is definitely exercise.

Ruth and I made breakfast for us all yesterday morning. And we had all slept in, so it was pretty close to 11:00am by the time we actually ate!

Good thing we're used to working in a small kitchen.

Omelette.

Breakfast is ready. They don't have tortillas the same as in Mexico...they are thicker similar to the ones in Guatemala.

They have two cats here...Lita and Lion. This is Lita...she seems to have taken a liking to me!

Around 12:30pm Ruth and I walked down to the big Exito grocery store. We wanted to make dinner for our hosts and we hadn't been in a grocery store here yet so of course we were curious about prices and selection.

It was about 2 kms (1.3 miles) downhill every step of the way, some of it quite steep.

Yes, this is a two way street!

See the umbrella with the sign under it? That's a lady who operates an informal system to regulate the traffic. 

A view of the suburbs near where we are staying.

Yep, you can buy real cheddar cheese...for a price. $15,800 dollars? No, not that much. Those are Colombian pesos. For the exchange, we multiply everything by .0004. So that little block of cheese would be about $6.30 CAD.

Lots of different types of fruit.

Chicken is quite cheap, as is ground beef. Eggs are about 5,000 pesos per dozen, so about $2.00 CAD. The fruit in this particular store seemed reasonable, but our host Andrea says that it is cheaper in the big market downtown.

Ruth, looking at the hot chocolate aisle.

You'd think that coffee would be a big thing, but it's not as big as hot chocolate here in Colombia. Hot chocolate is the breakfast drink, along with many different varieties of fruit juices.

We bought a 6 pack of beer for 11,300 pesos ($4.52 CAD) and a cheap bottle of wine for 18,300 ($7.32 CAD).

Beer is cheap, but wine and spirits are more expensive than we would have thought. Colombia does not produce much of it's own wine, and Colombians are not in general big wine drinkers. However they do have a very popular spirit called aguardiente this is about 29% alcohol and tastes like anisette.

Then it was the steep climb back uphill for two kms (1.3 miles) carrying our purchases. Any normal person would have paid the 5,000 pesos ($2.00 CAD) and taken a taxi, but you know that we're not normal. Plus, we needed the exercise. Got to get in shape for the five day hike to the Lost City next month!

Had a good last evening with Andrea and Herber and showed them some photos of where we spend the summers in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Today is a travel day, so this morning we will say goodbye (gracias por todo Andrea y Herber!) for now, and we will hop in a taxi to take us to the southern bus terminal where we will have a four and a half hour bus ride to the city of Manizales.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today only...Amazon's best selling digital bathroom scale. This is very cheap...check out the price!

Etekcity High Precision 11lb-400lb Digital Body Weight Bathroom Scale, Black