The Legend of the Caciques

I paid special attention today to how Jorge’s mother cooks the delicious food every day. For each meal, I watched the ingredients she added and asked questions along the way. Many of the spices she uses are similar to the ones my family uses in our cooking as well such as coriander, turmeric, and bay leaves. She actually grows many of the herbs in her garden. Also, when entering their house, I wore special straw slippers on my feed as to not track dirt from the outside. I seriously need to get me a pair of these and ditch the expensive birkenstocks. My Spanish vocabulary is definitely starting to expand as I am constantly learning new words. My ability to process words more rapidly is improving as well.

The drinks that Jorge’s mother makes with each meal are always super tasty and unique. Usually, in the morning, we drink the organic hot chocolate with breakfast and then coffee an hour later. With lunch and dinner, we usually drink the different types of fresh fruit juices. Today however, the beverage with lunch involved many more ingredients. She created a concoction of many different herbs, many of which I did not know, into a jug and let the flavors seep into the water. One of the distinct flavors I could actually identify was lemongrass. Below are the images of the meals from today as well as the beverage concoction. Later in the day, I learned that arepa is the term given to the form of the food and not necessarily the filling. For the light meal at dinner, we ate arepas again, except the filling for these included different kinds of ground lentils, spices, eggs, and cheese.

Jorge and I made another trip to the waterfall today. He had been complaining of pain in his arm that was concerning him. If his arm was injured, he could no longer practice/play music, could not build, and therefore, could not generate income. It it scary to think how dependent Jorge is on his ability to continue working. When we went to the falls a few days prior, the frigid water provided a form of cryotherapy for Jorge and myself as well. We went back today for a second round.

Instead of heading directly back to the farm, we hiked further to a lagoon near the town of Ubaque. Little did I know that a story I had read in a Spanish class the year before would come to life in front of me. The story explains how native tribal leaders, known as casiques, would be covered in gold powder and rowed to the middle of a lake or lagoon. There, as part of a ritual, they would jump into the water as an offering to the gods for rain and for harvest. The gold dust would settle at the bottom of these bodies of water and would later attract many who sought the gold for wealth. The lagoon we visited today was one of the sacred sites.

At the end of the day, I was able to provide something new to Jorge and his family. I had brought tea bags with me that a family friend had bought when traveling to Pakistan. We drank the cardamom tea with dinner tonight. It felt good to exchange aspects of culture no matter how small.