Day 19 – Rio Pance

A lazy Sunday morning this morning, although not too lazy with a baby demanding attention at early hours.

Today being Sunday, Enrique organised a trip for the families somewhere for lunch. This time it was to a restaurant up on the Pance River, a favourite area for the people of Cali to go and relax on the weekend and cool down in the cold waters of the river. This is one of the few non-poluted rivers in the area which makes it popular for swimming.

This trip it was just us and the Italian family with their adopted sibling group (two girls and a boy – quite a challenge for them!), plus Enrique and his girlfriend and their dog … plus one of Enrique’s usual drivers.

The restaurant was a private and fairly exclusive affair, well away from the crowds and noise on other parts of the river. It also had a swimming pool and lots of trees providing shaded seating areas which made for a very relaxed atmosphere.

We sat around and drank fresh lemonade and ate fried banana. The kids went for a swim in the pool, and we went for a wade in the river – the water was freezing cold, which was quite refreshing, but not exactly pleasant. Our Teva’s worked well, this is exactly the type of environment they were designed for – they don’t mind getting wet at all.

Lunch was a huge pork schnitzel with rice and chips and an avocado salad on the side. We finished with some huge bananas – I love their bananas here, very tasty.

We also discovered something that Andres likes to eat! We’ve been trying to get him to eat rice cereal and corn cereal, but he hasn’t really been interested. We think they were feeding him fruit juice in addition to his formula at the orphanage, so we don’t think he has had much experience with eating “solid” food or with bland food. He did like a little bit of the pureed mango from a jar we tried at one point, but we haven’t had much success with anything else. While sitting around letting lunch digest with a huge plate of large bananas in front of us, we decided to try a little bit of one mashed up into a paste to see if he would eat that. After some patience we had some success – he did seem to enjoy the banana and was starting to get the eating action right! We did make quite a mess, but we were happy that we’ve made a little bit of progress.

After lunch we sat around for a while relaxing and enjoying the countryside – before finally heading back down to the city. It was fascinating seeing all the little restaurants along the road and the people perched on rocks in the river – thousands of them. There are regular bus services shuttling people to and from the area, so it’s relatively easy for the locals to get here.

Tweets from today

Just back from spending the day near the Pance River, enjoying the Colombian countryside. 6 years ago this place was guerrilla territory.

31st May, 2009 6:45 PM from web