Tejo


Tejo is a sport played in Colombia. It’s like curling, except you throw the weights like 60 feet instead of sliding them on the ground. The target is like a sandbox, except it’s filled with clay, and tilted on its side. Inside it, are explosives; little pink triangular envelopes filled with paper. These make very loud booming noises when you hit them, and the whole Tejo hall celebrates. The weights are so heavy and the clay so viscous that you need to pry/dig the weights out.

The admission fee to a Tejo hall is that there is no admission fee. You need to buy a certain number of beers. For the one we went to, in San Gil, Santander, you had to buy 5. The elegance of this is that you aren’t explicitly buying a slot of time. Because by the time you’re done 5 beers you’ve lost any interest in the activity you were doing when you started the beers.