Hot dog let down

My time in Bogota is nearly up. In 2 months i'll be on a plane back to Glasgow, crippled under the weight of the portion of two years worth of books stacked into the hand luggage. Preposterous to think i've been here for two years.

Since the holidays I have been generally sooking up the atmosphere in Bogotá, not too much travelling save for a weekend in Villa de Leyva with cheeky colleague Annie during which we tanned a lot of wine while writing articles for the English language paper and went to visit an archaeological site of giant stone phalluses. Villa de Leyva has one of the largest main plazas in Latin America and very nice it is too, especially in that syrupy 5pm light that Colombia does so well:

During Easter I decided to make the most of Bogota without the hassle of having to go to work interefering. The Iberoamerican theatre festival was in full swing and I caught a champion Macbeth in the Parque Bolivar.

So that's a bit of a catch-up, now on to the main topic: scran.

I find the food in Colombia to be endlessly fascinating. From the comforting Boyacense stodge served up by Sergio's gran to the thrilling discovery of a Kola Roman milkshhake in delicious restaurant Diana Garcia (Kola Roman is VERY sweet pink fizzy juice, something in the ballpark of Panda Kola), Colombian scran is a constant adventure. I've eaten fried (unwashed) pig intestines, deep-fried ants, udder, lungs, bizarre root vegetables, goat, shark, stingray, puffer fish, dodgy arepas and other pastry delights from greasy street stalls, haute cuisine Carribbean style and thousands of slabs of mantecada - similar to Victoria sponge but with a hint of aniseed through it (recipe's coming home with me) – from the bakery in front of the staffroom.

And throughout those two years of gluttonny, of eating anything and everything that came my way with never a thought of food hygiene crossing my mind, I never got sick. The iron stomach laughed in the face of pizza left sweating under a heat lamp for endless afternoons, it spat at the feet of Peruvian shellfish rice in a sweltering market stall.

Ironic that this beast of digestion should be derailed by something as prosaic as a hot dog. A hot dog! And not even one of the many dubious hot dogs callejeros i have chomped on in my time - not the limp pink slice of grimmness handed over withh a flourish outside crap amusement park Salitre Magico, nor the crisp-encrusted brute sold outside a nighttime staduium vallenato extravaganza in Valledupar (evidently prepared hours in advance and laughably “heated up”by a 30-second stint on a greasy hot plate).

No, it was a hot dog from respected cinema chain Procinal! I repeat, an establishment hot dog, innocently disguised as part of a combo, its retro gloriousness as it sat there glistening beside the popcorn and the Coke totally obscuring the bacterial holocaust contained within its entrails. And mine too, shortly after. Im sure we can spare ourselves the ghastly details, but ghastliest of all is for the old iron stomach to lose its two year deveoping country gold medal winning streak to a fucking hot dog. The indignity.