Blogs from Quindío, Colombia, South America - page 11

In Colombia, if you walk into a souvenir store you will deffinitly see this for sale: a hand made minature version of a bus that is extremely colorfull usually with reds, yellows, and blues (like the Colombian flag) and on top of it features little tiny fruit baskets, chickens, and may or may not have a little person riding on the back. This is called a "Chiva". Chiva also means goat in spanish, but in this case we are talking about the Colombian party bus. Back in the day the chiva was used for local transportation and people used a ladder to climb up the bus and store their belongings for the ride. Today there are more modern city buses for transportation, so the Chiva is used less but can be rented for partys! You can ... read more

Salento The road between Bogotá and Salento was a nightmare - not as a result of unsafe driving, but rather cockroaches and a million trucks on the road. We finally found out why bus drivers always turn the air con up high, this keeps cockroaches out of the bus! We coped by singing La Cucaracha! Salento is one of the little towns in the Zona Cafeteria, the Colombian coffee zone. There are hundreds of coffee farms in this green, picturesque part of the Occidental Andes. The Andes split up into three ranges in Colombia and this range is the western-most one of the three. This area is ideal for coffee farming as a result of a perfect climate, the correct altitude for coffee and very rich volcanic soil. We stayed in Plantation House, run by an ... read more

Greetings! This past weekend I traveled into the coffee region about 3 hours outside of Cali with my friend Aleja and her mother Martha. The terrain was unlike anything I have ever seen. The mountains are very different from ours in Colorado as they are covered in tall deep green grass rather than pine trees and rock, though they do house the same pumas and bears as we do in the Rockies. The two trees that do cover these mountains are palms and eucalyptus. We stayed the night in a small mountain town, Salento, where the trims of the houses are painted in traditionally very bright colors that would have Home Owner Associations in the U.S. passing out (orange and green combos, or blue and pink, red and yellow was my favorite). This may not shock ... read more

Heute sind wir um 06.30 h aufgestanden da wir ins benachbarte Valle de Cocora fahren wollten. Leider regnete es in Stroemen doch wir liessen uns nicht entmutigen und nahmen die beschwerliche Fahrt auf uns. Mit einem uralten Willy's Jeep fuhren wir mit 8 Personen (!) los. Auf holpriger Strasse erreichten wir nach 40 Minuten den Weiler Cocora. Dort sahen wir bereits die ersten hohen Wachspalmen die aus dem Nebelwald herausragten. Leider hatten wir nicht wie die Einheimischen Gummistiefel und reiten wollten wir auch nicht. So machten uns mit unseren Sandalen auf einen der Schlammpfade bis wir nicht mehr weiterkonnten. Wir nahmen dann spaeter noch einen anderen Weg bis wir auch hier aufgeben mussten. Trotzdem hat uns die bergige Umgebung mit den tropischen Palmen gut gefallen. Am Nachmittag haben wir uns dann noch den Fussballmatch Italien-Frankreich angesehen. ... read more

Quito to Salento was a long journey that involved an overnight stay in Cali. I had to change flights in Bogota and the connection was delayed. On arrival at my hostel in Cali I found out that it was somebody's house and that the owner was decorating so I couldn't stay there. Instead, the owner called a friend of and I stayed at her house. The next day I got a bus to Armenia, which was also delayed, and from there I caught another bus to Salento. Salento sits at an altitude of around 2800 metres in the Zona Cafetera (Coffee Region). Cali is at a much lower altitude and appears quite like the Carribean. The temperature cooled as we drove up to Salento and the palm trees and sugar cane gave way to grassy hills ... read more