Saturday, May 18, 2002
Touched by an Anvil
Today, my buddy Craig took me out to enjoy a local Colombian pasttime. The game is called Tejo (pronounced 'tay ho'). We took a couple of busses to the poor end of town where 'things can get a little rough'.
This is an area where the cars don't stop at lights because of the risk of carjacking. The streets are mostly empty and so when people walk down them they walk in the middle of the road to avoid somebody jumping out of the alley to rob them.
Regardless, things were safe enough. As we walked I heard a loud 'Bang!' and immediately ducked for cover.
'That sounded like a gunshot!' I exclaimed.
"That's Tejo. We're here." Craig laughed.
We walked into what would be considered an old parking lot that had been converted into an arena for tejo. The game is almost identical to our version of horseshoes with one difference. Explosives.
The pit is about 15-20 meters long with a box filled with wet clay at either end. In the clay is an envelope filled with gunpowder. Players take turns throwing cast iron hockey pucks across the field into the clay. When they hit the clay, mud sprays everywhere. When they hit the envelope, it explodes and sprays the mud even farther putting on a real good explosion and making your ears ring.
We arranged our field at the counter and ordered some beer.
After the first few minutes we realized how hard it was to hit a tiny envelope from such a distance, so we upped the stakes and stuffed another envelope into the mud.
An hour later, we were getting better and stuff was blowing up, our ears were ringing and we were getting muddy. I think it was the beer that suggested we double up again and use four envelopes instead of the usual one. To make it interesting, every time we blew one up we made everyone drink.
Ahhhh Colombia. Where else can you play drinking games that involve explosives?
