Traveling to the Coffee Zone

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Today we hopped on a bus, similar to a Greyhound bus, and headed over and through the mountains to the Coffee Zone (Zona Cafetera, or Coffee Axle) where the region produces the most of Colombia's coffee crop. The people here are fantastic as we were expecting to catch a 11:45am bus, but when we arrived at the station, Elias (Jose's family) found a bus that left at 10:30, and the driver stood there waiting on us even though it was 10:32am. The views were, once again, stunning, and mountain sides hold coffee plants galore, all in perfect lines to make the picking easier. We were so high up, I felt like we were really close to the clouds. We also witnessed 3 kids, not older than 13-14, hop on the back of a semi truck for a ride! The dogs, again, were just lounging on the side of the street or sitting in chairs. Cute.

The trip on the bus took 6 hours from Medellin to Armenia and cost us approx $25USD each. We then met Orley, who would be our personal driver for a lot of this part of the trip. Orley took us just outside of Armenia, to a smaller town called Montenegro where our coffee farm/hotel was located. La Tata is the name of the hotel and it was adorable! We each got our own rooms and they were vibrant and very nice, there was a pool and hot tubs, and a gorgeous walking path around the land that included rabbits and birds and of course, coffee plants. The package for this part of the trip included breakfast and dinner each day at La Tata, all of our excursions (tours, driver, transfers, park entrance fees) for four nights and was only $500 USD per couple! LOVE IT!

We arranged our schedule for the next 4 days with the hotel staff, then we had a fabulous dinner prepared just for us. It is the low season so there were no other guests this night.

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Comments

[Miranda]

So glad ur having fun! Bet u can get some good fresh coffee.