Lunch Lost In Translation = Me Milking Myself
Lunch For $2
On my first day in Popayan I decided to have a nice, sit down lunch at a local restaurant. The food here is quite cheap, so the prepared menu of the day lunch is only 3500 Pesos/$2.
I asked what the menu of the day was. I didn’t understand one or two items she said, so I asked what those dishes were. She explained, but I still didn’t understand.
In the end, I’m pretty easy going with what I eat on the trip as long as there is no dairy. When I stop traveling I’ll become a vegetarian. Until then, essentially being a vegan on the trip would be quite tough since I’m often not able to cook for myself.
Well, I asked if there was any “queso” (cheese) in the menu of the day. She didn’t understand. I repeated myself several times. She kept on hearing “cuero” or leather.
I should note that I got up at 3am on this morning to travel from Cali to Popayan. I was tired and a tired Adam = a sarcastic and impatient Adam.
Nevertheless, I stayed patient and decided to do something funny out of frustration that would definitely fix the problem. I said “No! Queso!” and then I grabbed my boobs, squeezed them a few times as if I were milking myself, and made a milking sound while saying “vaca”, Spanish for cow.
I guess that sounds gross, but I can promise you that they understood 100% I was referring to milk and that the word they were misunderstanding through my gringo accent was queso.
We all laughed our heads off for the next 30-60 seconds. They couldn’t believe I just did that, and I couldn’t believe how funny they found it!
My Lactose-Free Lunch
And no, there was no cheese in any of the components of the menu of the day. To the left is my lactose-free $2 lunch. I can only imagine these stories will increase once I get to Asia and I don’t speak the local language at all… 🙂
In the end, I patronized them several times for breakfast and lunch. We took this picture and they were so surprised and flattered. They laughed the whole time and after I left I could hear them screaming with laughter after the gringo asked for a picture. It was the highlight of my day 🙂
My Favorite Chef/Restaurant In Popayan, Colombia!
LOL!! This is gold, mate! Great story and hey does it matter HOW we communicate, as long as the message comes across? When I was younger and travelling with my family we were in Switzerland when my dad wanted to buy eggs. We spoke no French, German or Swiss, and the shopkeeper spoke no English, so my dad drew a chicken… and the shopkeeper brought him some chicken fillets. So my dad then drew an egg popping out of the chickens behind – it got us a dozen fresh eggs and big smiles all around. Whatever works!
How cool is that! I’ll stick to grabbing parts of my body. My art skills won’t get me very far! 🙂