Dear reader, one of the miracles of Colombia - the ice cream. Having had the fortune of picking up Spanish in my first 3 months, a world of opportunity had opened up before me. A world of sweet, frozen, milk-based opportunity.

Ice cream in Colombia is not the sweet sugar-slop you buy in the Walmarts and Aldis of the world. No. What first hits you is the explosion of freshness. Milk that came from a cow, not reconstituted powder. Coconut pieces that were cut from a coconut three days earlier. Pieces of mango that taste like mango, not a re-gelatinized cellular matrix.

I won't lie, my typically lean frame did put on 5-6 pounds after four weeks of eating 3 ice creams a day - tomato de arbol, coconut, lulo, mango, leche, yellow-fruit blend.

To this day, I can still taste those ice creams. Incredible. They lack the fattiness and excess sugariness of Western brands. They remind me of the plombir and eskimo I fondly ate as a boy in Moscow.