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Published: November 30th -0001
We left Medellin's internationally tarnished reputation heading for an area of Colombia which is much more politically correct and for which Colombia is equally famous. The Coffee Country.
This was both a convenient way to break up the long bus journey from Medellin to Popayan and a journey of love for someone who needs a litre of coffee just to start the engine in the morning (Felicity). It also turned out to be a great area of natural beauty to visit.
Our first destination was Manizales a 5 hour trip South, with the driver being slightly more reserved at overtaking than most of his colleagues we'd experienced so far. It was probably fortunate that he was also very alert too as we had to break hard to avoid a large branch of a tree which filled our lane of the road as it fell.
It is something I'll keep mentioning throughout these blogs, but Colombia just has some of the most spectacular countryside. In our journey to Manizales we saw yet more of the verdant green landscape and impressive mountain valleys that make it easy to forget that you are less than 5 degrees North of the equator.
What gives it away is the tropical vegetation that is also part of the landscape. Palm trees, sugar cane, huge bamboo and of course coffee trees were in abundance as we approached Manizales.
During the bus journey we stopped for lunch at a beautiful mountain restaurant, with great views of the river valley below. We didn't take anything, but we began to wish that we had once we saw and smelled the fish and chicken dishes being served up and heard the comments of *deliciosa“ from our fellow Colombian passengers.
We arrived 15 minutes early at Manizales and so still had an hour and a half of daylight to got sorted out and start exploring. This was only an overnight stop, but was nonetheless worth a look around.
Similar to Medellin, Manizales has a cable car up which you can use to ride over the shanty towns. This starts at the bus terminal and takes you up to the centre of town. It is the same French-built solution as Medellin and offers a good view of the sprawling University City of Manizales. It ends at Carrera 39, which is one of the City's main streets which takes
you up to the main square, known as 'El Cabel'. More on that later.
We had a hotel in mind, known as Regine's, but no real idea where it was. So from the cable car we jumped into a taxi and got lost, before another taxi driver guided our driver to our destination. The guy who met us at the door clearly didn't expect a couple of backpackers. He kept asking us whether the price was OK. Granted it was a little bit more than 100,000 Pesos (USD50) per night - but not that much. Regine's was an OK hotel, but with small beds and an inability to close all of the windows, it was by no means perfect. Plus, the old Colombian WiFi issue came back to haunt us as it was reliably unreliable.
The centre of Manizales in the Zona Rosa, the more upmarket part of town, is 'El Cabel'. It has a huge mining tower as a tribute to Juan Valdez, together with the old cable car and its attachments going up to what is now a wooden set of what looks like shops and offices. Historically it was most likely a key part of
Manizales coffee-producing centre. But I have to confess we didn't have time to investigate further. The people of Manizales have certainly developed the town a lot since the original cable car first went into operation and the Carrera 39 that we had driven up when we arrived, is decorated with lots of large jester and animal sculptures, including a bull hanging vertically onto the side of a bank. Around the centre are a few restaurants, but none that are particularly outstanding or worth a mention. There is a large Juan Valdez Cafe on one corner of the square which is one of the lively night spots of the square. Surprisingly it sells no straight alcohol, so maybe the clients get excited on Irish Coffee and working WiFi.
In the morning we were treated to a Regine's breakfast including brown bread, which turned out to be white bread toasted. Whilst we were having breakfast, the staff were painting some of the walls and dropping white paint on the nice wooden floors. Bit of a shame, but they were smiling.
After breakfast we caught a taxi to the Manizales bus station. Our destination was to the pretty town of Salento,
but this required us to go to Armenia first and then changes buses to get to Salento.In total it was about a 5 hour journey on 3 buses to get to Salento. It was again beautiful countryside for much of the journey and a relatively smooth trip - especially if, like me, you have become immune to the Russian roulette style of driving that the bus drivers had.
We arrived in Salento late afternoon on Monday. What a beautiful town. Very similar to Baricharra where we were just over a week ago - except more colourful and for me, more lively. Hollywood filmmakers, if you are still reading - try out this place instead of Barichara.
We had made some investiagtion on Hotels and chose "Posada el Cafe“, which is close to the Salento main square and one of the more active streets during the day. This is a pretty basic hotel, no TV, no WiFi and windows that don't close and therefore it was a bit expensive for what we paid. But it was run by a very nice lady, Maria Rincon, who arranged an excellent 3 hour horse riding experience for us and advised us on
our planned walk through the valley of Cocora.
Before we did either of those though, we went to eat. Similar to Barichara, many restaurants are either only open for lunch or close at 7pm. So at 7:30pm there wasn't much cooking. We wandered back towards our Hotel, since we'd seen some interesting candidates earlier on. Almost all were closed, except for a family run place called Bocharro. The specialty of Salento is Trout, caught and also farmed in the Rio Quindio. Trout in garlic was my choice and it turned out to be practically the best trout I have ever had. A fully filleted trout in a cheese and garlic sauce, still bubbling as it was served to the table. Felicity had a Steak which was also very good. It was like eating in the family home, since after we were served the next meal that was prepared was the family meal for seven. As soon as we finished we got the bill and wished them Buen Provecha.
Our first full day in Salento started with a horseriding trek - and it really was a trek. Salento is perched 250m or so above the Rio Quindio valley floor, which
was our destination for the trek. Our guide picked us up at the hotel and we walked to his house to meet our horses. He needed to do a running repair and so whilst his wife prepared our horses he set about replacing the horseshoe on his horse. When we were all ready we rode through the rolling streets of Salento until we got to a point overlooking the valley. The horses knew what to expect but we were a little bit surprised by the steep narrow winding path that the horses, with us on their backs had to negotiate downwards. For a mere beginner like me, heading down the equivalent of the steepest bit of a Black Ski slope on a horse was a little nerve racking. The path was quite wet and muddy and the horses slipped a little as they made their way down. We both thought that one of us would fall off as we headed downwards and leaned back in the saddle to compensate. But we both managed it safely down and walked, trotted and cantered along by the river and occasionally through it.
My horse was called El Principe, but we nicknamed him
"Mr. Farty Pants“, since he'd clearly had a very bad breakfast and as such was producing additional horsepower on a pretty regular and sustained basis. He appeared to use this to his advantage. When going up hill a couple of times he let out a long fart and this seemed to give him extra climbing energy. It certainly kept us amused.
About half way through the trek, we stopped at a house to pay an access fee to pass through their land. Underneath a kind of car port, there were other horses owned by the land owners. Mr Farty Pants, with me on board, decided to join them and almost knocked my block off in the process, as I ducked down sharply to avoid my head meeting the corrugated iron of the car port roof.
We treked through some really beautiful scenery, past a waterfall to a couple of viewpoints and through old disused railway tunnels one of which was up to the horse's knees in mud. There had been a few wet days beforehand, but we did this all in beautiful weather. By the time we headed back, I was much more confident with the horse as
we climbed back up the same route, and shrugged off the belief that I'd be on the ground any minute. It was really a fun 3 hours trek - even better than the ride we had at Villa de Leyva at the end of August.
In the afternoon we went for a 3 hour walk (round trip) up around the hills above Salento. It was really beautiful countryside, as always, and wonderfully peaceful, despite just following the unpaved roads. So all in all, it was a pretty healthy day.
We did the same as we did the previous night and sat outside the most lively bar, fitting in with the locals. We were soon joined by a group of women and a few men who took over the inside of this wooden pub for a birthday party. They really had a lot of fun and despite moving across the square to go and eat we could still hear their screams of enjoyment coming from inside the pub.
The next day we took a Jeep up from the main square at 9am and went up to the nearby Cocora Valley - about a 40 minute drive away on
unpaved roads. This had also been recommended by Maria our Hotel owner, who had given us a basic map of how to get up to the top and how to return via a different route.
Salento was the place that we met the most foreigners of our Colombian trip so far and a number of them were packed into the Jeep we took. We were intent on doing the full supposedly 5km up hill walk to Acaime and back via Finca de la Montana - a ranch perched near the top of the hill. Many of our fellow travellers were much less keen on doing what would be a 5 hour walk.
The walk to Acaime turned out to be a climb of over 500m walking along narrow stony tracks through the woods and crossing the river numerous times by walking on thin logs of wood tied together with barbed wire. A little nearer the top we started encountering signs telling us that it cost 3,000 pesos "Cover charge“ to get to Acaime, but that included a free drink or chocolate. We must have passed at least 10 signs telling us this as we continued our climb upwards.
As it happens this was only for the bit right at the top, which we could have skipped, but we decided that since we'd come so far we might as well complete the journey. We had our drink and met up with another Dutch couple, who had been on the Jeep, but who we had not yet talked to. They told us that the popular "Plantation House“ hostal that we'd considered staying at had had a robbery the previous night, with a couple losing everything. We were glad we had decided against staying there.
To start our walk back down to Cocora, we had to walk down from Acaime for about 30 minutes. Then it was supposedly a 800m walk to Finca de la Montana. However, as we started it, it seemed like it was going to be 800m upwards as instead of what we thought was a downhill walk, we were faced with a further up hill climb. This 800m walk took us almost 1 hour to complete. Having reached the Finca, we then had to sign a guestbook, before taking a really beautiful, all downhill route back to Cocora. The landscape really did look like a Swiss
ski resort in the summer, except for the 60m Palm trees that adorned the slopes of the hills we walked past and down.
Back at Cocora town, we joined a few people waiting for a Jeep down. They had already been waiting for 30 minutes and in total they ended up waiting almost an hour before one of the Jeep drivers decided to take us back down to Salento. All of a sudden other people appeared, including a tour guide and friend who immediately comandeered the front seats, leaving one of the paying passengers to ride shotgun, standing up and clinging on to the roof of the Jeep. Half way down we were joined by a young woman and her Puppy Dog which she tossed in the back of the Jeep with the 6 of us. Initially she rode shotgun, but then as more people wanted to catch a lift she disappeared onto the roof. I thought she'd jumped off and abandoned the dog and the dog clearly thought the same as it made a dash to jump out of the Jeep. I grabbed hold of it and the English lady next to me fixed his leash on so
she could hold on to him too. It was only once some of the other standing passengers had got off, that the dog owner reappeared and the dog calmed down.
Back in Salento, we rewarded ourselves with Strawberries and Cream and a huge Banana split, for what must have been at least a 12km walk which vertically was about 1200m in total.
After a wander around and a shower, we returned to what was becoming in Swiss terms our "Stamm Tisch“ (regular's table) outside the pub in the square for another couple of pre-dinner beers.
We ate at the same place as the previous night - the only restaurant open in the square and because our first choice that we'd gone to one the first night was unfortunately closed. It was another excellent trout meal.
The next morning after being woken up by a chorus of dogs, accompanied by the Hotel's own, at 3am, we had breakfast, paid for the Hotel and made our way to the square again to find a bus back to Armenia and a connection to our next destination, Popoyan from where we'd go to the archaeological town and world heritage site
of San Agustin.
Places we have visited and can recommend Restaurant
Bacharro (especially for Trout),
Carerra 6, Salento
Activities (Salento)
Horseriding/trekking around Salento
Walk from Cocora to Acaime and back down via Finca de Montana
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