Palm Trees and Gunpowder

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We spent 3 days in Salento, a beautiful little town in the middle of the coffee region. It looked like the sterotypical Colombian town, complete with Juan Valdez look-a-likes wearing ponchos and cowboy hats riding horses down the streets. Unfortunately with Colombian stereotypes comes violence, and we saw our first example in this tiny, quiet town (not directed toward us). Our first night in town we went to the town square for a few drinks at the only place that was open with a group of people from the hostel. There was a drunk man sitting on the steps in front of the bar, and a man inside the bar starting whipping him in the face with a horse whip! The military police came and hauled off the guy who had been whipped. It was really an uncomfortable situation because we did not know what was going on or why someone who seemed to be minding their own business deserved a face whipping.

On to more pleasant things...

The hostel owns a coffee farm, which we took a tour of. It was quite interesting. Unfortunately there was no coffee ready at the moment, so we didn't get to sample any. The next day we hiked through the Valle de Cocora, a forest of 60 metre tall wax palm trees (tallest in the world). It was straight out of Jurassic Park, we probably took over 100 photos.

Yesterday we tried a traditional Colombian sport, tejo - throwing rocks at gunpowder. It's quite similar to the beanbag game, except the surface in mud and oil instead of a wood plank, the beanbags are clay rocks, and instead of holes as targets, there are packets of gunpowder. One point for closest to the centre, three points for an explosion. Vance was the first to explode one, but I'm happy to say that I eventually got the satisfaction of exploding one too.

We decided we did not want to take a night bus to Bogota, so we found a cheap flight on a Dash-8 and arrived last night. Just a couple days here and then it's back to reality 😞

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