Visiting Colombia's coffee region

After a relaxing weekend, it was back on the road, and this time I was headed to Colombia’s coffee region, the “Eje Cafetero”. 

First off I had to take a bus from Medellin to the city of Armenia, which took around 7 hours, and from there I needed to take a mini-bus for the final 45 minutes to the small village of Salento. After hearing me butchering his beautiful language, the driver of the bigger bus clearly doubted my ability to find the right mini-bus in Armenia, so he found a lady who was also heading on to Salento and asked her to accompany me! She was a really sweet lady who chatted away to me in Spanish for most of the journey (I think I got the gist) and when we got off in the village square at Salento she gave me a big hug! Honestly people are just so, so warm and friendly here. Its really touching.

Salento is a small village in very beautiful surroundings. One of the highlights of this area is the Valle de Cocora, a national park of lush green hills carpeted with cloud-forest and towered over by wax palm trees (which are the national tree and symbol of Colombia). I headed there the next day for a hike and met up with 4 other lone travellers: Dutch, Swiss, Slovakian and Australian! They were really nice and its a shame that they weren’t travelling onwards in the same direction as me as I would have liked to hang out with them for longer.

The first bit of the hike was along a very muddy path through some fields, passed a trout farm and dairy ranch and then into the cloud-forest. It was really, really muddy as a lot of people go this way on horseback, and also due to the rain. Luckily I had hired wellies at the hostel, which were a great help although I was still a bit nervous about slipping into the horse and cow dung, so I went pretty slowly and the others had to wait several times for me to catch up! 

The start of the hike

After an hour or so we stopped for lunch at a small nature reserve called Acaime, where over six different types of hummingbird were present. They were really beautiful colours and zipped past really close to our heads so we could hear the buzzing of their wings really loudly. 

One for the bird lovers out there...

After lunch we hiked another hour or so up quite a steep hill to “La Montaña”, as we’d read that from here we’d be privy to some of the most spectacular views in Colombia. Unfortunately by this point it was almost "daily downpour" time, and it grew increasingly grey and misty as we ascended. When we reached the top there was hardly any visibility at all!

"View" from La Montaña!

The route back was down a gravel road, which was a lot less muddy and slippery but unfortunately this was when the skies finally opened. After an hour or so of trudging through the torrential rain I had about 2 inches of water in my wellies and every bit of clothing I was wearing was soaked through - despite my cagoule! I might have had a serious sense of humour failure at this point, had we not suddenly come across the most amazing views of the wax palms on the hills. Even in the mist it was stunning, and I can only imagine how beautiful it would have been with better visibility (and maybe a blue sky!).

That evening, after drying off slightly, I had a nice (and very cheap) dinner and beer with the Swiss and Slovakian guys. We went to a bar where old men in ponchos and cowboy hats were playing Carom billiards. I'd been hoping to see some “Tejo”, which is a traditional Colombian sport where you throw a metal disc at a board covered with gunpowder, but it wasn't being played there unfortunately!

Beautiful Wax Palms in the Valle de Cocora

The next morning I took a tour of the coffee plantation owned by the guy who ran the hostel I was staying in (which was originally the main coffee plantation house in Salento). It was really interesting to learn about coffee production. Colombia is the 3rd largest exporter in the world (after Brazil and Vietnam) and produces only Arabica coffee (less caffeine and more taste than Robusta coffee which is the only other commercial type of coffee). Interestingly there are many varietals of Arabica coffee but they’re always blended together, regardless of the type, the quality, the region, the age etc. No-one has really tried selling pure varietals, or testing whether coffee beans taste better from different years, or as they age, etc. Quite different to the wine industry!

Finca Don Eduardo

After the talk we walked down to the finca to be shown around. We saw coffee in each stage of production: from tiny coffee plants to bigger trees with green coffee buds appearing, to the beans being fermented and dried in the sun. We then took some of these dried beans, de-skinned them, roasted them, ground them and made ourselves some coffee. It was pretty good! They also grew pineapples, bananas, plantains, oranges, avocados and more on the farm, so it was nice to have a walk around.

Coffee at each stage of the production cycle!

I had no idea pineapples grew like this!

By the end of the tour the rain had started up again and this signalled the end of my time in Salento! It was time to go head back to Armenia and take another bus to my final destination in Colombia: Cali.