Viva las Américas!: Fresh coffee, dizzying heights and explosive drinking games!

A 6-hour bus ride will bring you from Medellin Terminal de Sur to the terminal in Pereira. We were due to get off at Armenia, but a kindly bus man told us it would be less hassle and save us some time if we got off at the junction to to Salento and flagged down a “collective”, which is a small minibus acting as a local bus service. This was fine to do during the day, but I would not be inclined to hang around by the roadside at night, not unless you had a good few people for company. But collectivos come along every 15 mins or so, so flagging one down is not too much hassle.

Salento is a small, un-assuming town in the Zona Cafeteria, the coffee growing region of Colombia, where all your supermarket-bought Colombian Arabica coffee comes from. Rolling hills and mountains, covered in a blanket of trees and coffee farms. It’s a welcome break from the smoke and heavy air of Colombia’s city. We were told that once here, people usually end up extending their stay, which is exactly what we ended up doing! We were staying this time in The Plantation House hostel, which, as the name suggests was an old coffee plantation home, built in the typical Spanish colonial style, wooden shutters and doors with a long wide porch surrounding the rooms. Compared to the city hostels, the accommodation is a bit sparse, basic and more farm-like. A bit older and more rustic one might say, but still very clean and cosy.

On our first night, not feeling very inclined to do an awful lot, we went for a few beers and played the game of Tejo (pronounced tay-ho). Apparently, what started off as a pub drinking game has now turned into a professional national sport! It involves a metal ring set into a mound of clay. On the metal ring you place a few paper pouches of gun powder. Then, bottle of beer in hand, you throw a metal weight at the clay, aiming of course for the gun powder sachets, so that when metal hits metal, the gun powder explodes with a loud bang! Enough to make me scream a girlish scream! Great fun though and it gets very competitive!

The next day, we took it upon ourselves to get up nice and early and take a bouncy jeep ride out to Valle de Cocora, a beautiful walking trail through a valley with immensely tall palm trees. The jeep was a little dune buggy style jeep, with local farmers jumping on the back to get a free spin down the road. On the road, we stopped to deliver some eggs to a local family, a box of food to a restaurant and dropped a young farm worker and his milk urn off on his delivery rounds!

As we started out walk through the farmland, it reminded me very much of the countryside en route to Carrantouhil in Co. Kerry; tall mountains, lush green fields, a flowing stream / river, cows and goats all around….just with a few big palm trees thrown in! As we progressed further into the valley, we hit thick Jurassic Park-style forest with palm trees, ferns and waterfalls at every turn. Crossing the river was negotiated by dodgy rope bridges, only capable of carrying one person at a time. After 2 hours of a nice, testing trek, we decided to brave the trail to La Montaña, one of the mountain peaks in the valley, knowing it was a steep 800m walk up, and at that stage, we were already at 2,400m up! My poor little heart had a hard time keeping up! About 30-45 mins later, a barking dog alerted us to the fact that a little house was perched on top of the hill, 2,860m in altitude. This must be our destination, we thought! When we reached the house, the little girl of the family high-fived us all and we signed the visitor’s book, which seemed the norm. Up here there were fantastic views of the valley, the mist rolling in over the hilltops adding some dramatic beauty. Several species of brightly-coloured hummingbirds whizzed past us as we took in the views. The tough ascent was definitely worth it!

On our way down, we walked through the rest of the Cocora trail, taking in the amazing scenery of steep hills dotted with these massive palm trees; their trunks so tall and skinny, they were like the supermodels of trees with perfect palm leaf “hair” perched on top. They look like a stiff breeze would blow them over, but they’re as solid as a rock. It wasn’t long before the rain came in though but we made it back to base in time. It rains almost like clockwork in Colombia, especially in this rainy season. Mid afternoon, the heavens open, usually followed by a thunderstorm or two. We’ve had some really amazing moments just lying in a hammock, beer in one hand, book in the other, in out of the rain and watching the blue lightening light up the sky followed quickly by savage thunder that would shake you to your bones.

This morning we had a slight change of pace! We joined a tour of the coffee farm connected to our hostel, Finca Don Eduardo, which was a really interesting and tasty experience! The British owner gave us a run-down of the coffee types of the world and how it’s grown, before showing us around his own little farm. We were shown the coffee seedlings, his retractable roof for drying the beans and his ingenious systems of solar powered hot water and rain water filtering system. One of his workers then made us a fresh cup of coffee, from de-skinning, roasting and grinding the beans to making a filter brew and letting us enjoy the finished product! The owner’s bright-spark idea is to lease out rows of coffee to buyers worldwide so that the coffee produced from those trees would be that person’s own brew of coffee. A similar scheme is in operation for wines and vineyards, but he’s attempting to market the coffee industry from his farm. His website is www.yourowncoffee.com. Visiting a coffee farm is well worth the trip, if not purely for the fresh cuppa you get at the end!

Bus ride from Medellin to Pereira / Armenia: 34,000 COP (about €15)
Valle de Cocora: Free!

Where we stayed: The Plantation House http://www.theplantationhousesalento.com/
How much?: 43,000 COP per double room (shared bathroom) per night (about €18)