Ay Colombia!

Bogotá is booming and the Caribbean coast is calling, says Elsa Young, who spent a blissful holiday eating her way around Colombia. Reasons to go: the best coffee, the freshest seafood, the zingiest exotic fruit … Oh, and the beaches aren’t bad either

- Elsa Young

I’M LOST. In Colombia.

Not an experience I’d ever imagined I would enjoy … until the Sunday afternoon it happens to me. We are in the old colonial town of Villa de Leyva, northeast of Bogotá, and I’ve wandered ahead of my husband, anxious to snap a shot of the cobbled street clear of the truck that had been stealing the view. And now Russ is nowhere to be seen.

I sit down on a stone bench in a grassy square. It’s quite delightful. A father watches over his son playing happily, students are drinking beers around the fountain and plenty of people are passing me with armfuls of fresh produce.

My excitement at the prospect of discovering a market trumps my curiosity about where on Earth Russ has gotten to and I march further up the cobbled street to the foot of the hill, in the direction of smoky air and music…

What an unexpected treat awaits. There’s organic produce everywhere. Locals are buying their supplies: aloe leaves for juicing, honey on the comb, vegetables both strange and recognisable. And finally I have a chance to identify the wonders of Colombian fruit firsthand. There are tangy uchuva (cape gooseberries) by the bucket load, raspberries and blackberries, mangoes, sour-sweet carambola (star fruit), curuba (banana passion fruit), and maracuya (granadillas). I also finally lay eyes on the famous guanabana fruit, so good it’s the stuffof fantasy: a magnificent oversized custard apple with black seeds, the perfect blend of sweetness and tartness.