Medellin - Bogota

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We left Medellin early on the Tuesday morning and got the bus to Armenia in the Zona Cafetera, from where we got a minibus straight out to Salento. Salento was a very cute little town with fantastic scenery surrounding it, though we saw little on our first night as we arrived as the sun was setting, mintues before there was a night-long powercut in the whole place. We managed find a hostel with the help of a friendy little boy and his mother where we settled in with nothing but candlelight. The following morning the power was back on and after we wandered around the town for a bit we decided we would get a 4x4 out to Cocora, a tiny settlement surrounded by giant wax palms. The jeep took about 40 minutes so we made a day out of walking through the fields full of these enormous palms, which were quite bizarre to look at! Our jeep ride back in the evening was cosy as there were 16 of us (including the driver) piled in and on what was essentially a 7 man vehicle.

The following morning we decided to go on a huge walk past all the coffee plantations after being woken up at 5 in the morning by a religious procession in the town. It was really scenic from start to finish and as we had ventured all the way down to the river in the bottom of the valley the walk back was a little tiring! After some lunch we headed back to Armenia to stay one night as we wanted to get a very early bus out to Bogota the next morning. It seemed like a nice enough little town though of course we didn't have long there. We woke up early on Friday morning and got the 7am bus to Bogota where we were picked up by a friend, Sergio, who we know through Kim. We had a fantastic weekend in the country with him and his family as it was a holiday on the Monday celebrating Colombian Independence. On return to Bogota we spent a day sightseeing in the city centre, visiting the Parliamentary and Presidential buildings as well as the area known as Candelera. We also paid a long visit to the gold museum, which was really incredible! We got an early night as we had to get up early to get the bus to San Agustin.

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