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Hi,
It is
Omer. I want to tell you about a town called
Salento in the region
“Zona Cafetera” or in English the coffee zone. In Salento there are farms of coffee and they also do tours in the farms.
Off course they also sell coffee in Salento.
When we got to Salento, we looked for a hostel, when we found one (Las Palmas), we accommodated ourselves. Then we asked the owner of the hostel where is the best cheapest local restaurant and he told us there is a very good one called Somy in the main plaza. Don't ask me why, but he came with us all the way to there and also stayed with us when we were eating. Later we discovered it was because his sister owns the place - that's why he also cleaned the table. I had the local typical dish - that is, a kind of Salmon called Trucha. It was with garlic sauce and it was very very very very tasty. There was a local starter dish called 'Patacon' that we got off course as a starter. It is a special kind of banana that you fry it - it was huge
(I don't know how they do it so big).
The next morning, we woke up late - we were very very tired from all the bus rides we have been through on the night and day before. Then we had breakfast, but if you want to say it correctly it was more lunch because it was already 12am. We went to the main plaza. When we got there we saw a craft shop, so we entered to see what they have inside to offer. Inside, he was selling a
spinning top (in Hebrew - Forfera and in Spanish - Trompo) - so I asked mom if she can buy me one and after thinking about it she bought me one.
I selected one in yellow, red and blue - these are the colors of the flag of Colombia. The owner of the shop showed us how to play with it and he did really good tricks. He got it to spin on his hand. Then I tried, I did it quite good but the only thing that was wrong was that it span on the opposite side. I spent the next hour or so trying to do it again
and again until I managed to it right. Meanwhile, mom and Nitzan were in the internet, speaking with our grandmothers.
Then we walked along a street full of shops with crafts and some restaurants. At the end of the street there were stairs leading to a view point from where you can see all Salento (even our hostel) and all the green hills around it. We climb it counting how many stairs there are -
there were something like 265 stairs! (but I am not sure because I do not remember). When we got back to the plaza, we saw a man doing circles in the plaza with big toy cars. So we asked for a round for Shachar and I pushed him around the plaza - it was fun. Walking back to the hostel we found a lady selling Arepas - these are kind of dough made of corn filled in with different fillings made on the BBQ. We took one, and it was soooo tasty that later when we went out for dinner - we returned to this lade and bought two more. We also had for dinner Patacon, this time it was topped with cheese, meet
and tomato sauce.
The next morning we went to
visit a coffee farm called El Ocaso. It was very nice. We had to walk about an hour to there, through nice trail walking downhill and on both sides there were many coffee and banana trees - it was all very green and beautiful. When we arrived to the coffee farm we got “welcomed” by 2 rottweilers barking at us. Then a guy from the farm came and we went with him to see the farm.
There were two kinds of coffee trees one with yellow coffee fruits and one with red fruits. At the beginning both of them are green (like almost any fruit in the world) then they get yellow and red. They pick them only when they are ready - when they are in yellow or red. The day we were there was Sunday so they were not picking, but he told us they are going to start picking the next day. We saw on the way also banana trees.
Then we went back to the building and he showed us the process. The process was they put all the coffee fruits in a special bowl
then it falls down into a special machine that divides it to two parts: on one side of the machine the peel and on the other side the coffee grains. Then the coffee grain goes to take a bath and then they put is a special place to get it dry. They dry it for three days keeping it at about 60 degrees. When the coffee grain is dry, they sell it to another factory where they toast it and that's the magic. When they sell the dry coffee grain it is still white and has no smell of coffee. Just after they toast it its get the brown color and gets the smell of coffee like in the supermarkets.
After that we went to the main house in the farm that also serves as a hostel. Over there we played with the rottweilers while dad was drinking coffee (together with another English couple that have joined our tour in the farm). Then we went to a view point in the farm, it was very nice. It was a valley and in the bottom there was a river.
Then we started walking back, up hill when suddenly we saw a
pickup on the road, so we stopped him and asked him if he would be willing to take us with him, and he said off course. So we got up into his car and he took us all the way to Salento in his comfortable and air-conditioned pickup. Then we saw the other couple walking ahead and he stopped for them as well - they went in the back of the pick up as there was no more space inside the car. When we were back in Salento we went wandering around again in the main plaza and in the streets around it.
The foolowing day, we woke up around 6 or 6:30am to get a
'willie' to Cocora Valley near Salento. A Willie is a kind of jeep used in this area as a taxi. Most of the willies we saw are quite old. The Willies go there at 7:30 and 9:30. We did not know they only go at these hours, we thought that they go whenever people come starting at 7:30. So, when we came to the main square at 7:35 they already left and gone - and we had to wait until the next
one at 9:30, it was very frustrating. Eventually at 9:30 we went with the willie to Cocora National park.
Cocora National Park has a very nice valley and in its bottom there is a river. There are two options one walking and the other is riding a horse. The guide said that riding the hours would take about 4 hours while walking will take about 5 hours. The greta thing in this day was that
We took the horses (with another couple that came with us in the willie). It did take us about 4 hours. I rode with Nitzan on Mariachi. Shachar and mom rode on Galinda and dad rode on Travieso (Travieso in English means naughty, and indeed he was naughty). The other pair, I do not remember the names of their horses. It was a lot of fun, we did not see much animals but we did see a red and black bird its seemed like a little parrot, but it wasn't. There were many rivers to cross with the horses. In one of them, Mariachi slipped a little bit and I fell off him, but I did not get hurt. But it was fun to cross
with the horses the rivers - the horses sometimes seemed like they do not want to cross, but actually they were just checking the water to see where to cross.
One of the points of the trail was another trail were the horses could not pass, just the people so we got off the horses tied them to a tree and started walking. The path led to a Colibri (i.e. hummingbird) house - a colibri house is a place surrounded by trees that people working there hand on the trees little bowls with nectar inside, so Colibri will come to drink. Most of the Colibris were green, they were beautiful. While they were drinking dad could take lots of pictures of them. Suddenly a blue bird came also to drink, so he took a picture of it as well.
Then we went back to the horses and started riding back to the starting point. This time we went through another path that leads to a view point on a mountain called 'La Montania' or in English 'The Mountain'. From that point and also afterwards from the rest of the trail, we saw many many palm trees called 'wax palms'. From
this point, dad gave me to ride on his horse and he walked - it was a lot of fun to be alone on a horse - I really liked it. I liked most the parts when the horse was galloping and not only walking. After a while, right at the end of the trail, I switched with dad and I walked.
When we got back to the starting point there was a kind of a kiosk - dad bought for himslef coffee (he loves coffee and he buys it all the time). Then we took the willies again back to Salento. Again it was very full and some of the people had to stand outside of the willie holding to its roof.
For dinner we went to a local restaurant called Lucy - it was a very very very tasty dinner and very cheap as well. I really would recommend you to go there one day.
The next morning, we left Salento, by bus on our way to San Cipriano - about this one, my mom will tell you the story.
As you know, my dad takes a lot of photos, so I could not
put all of them in this blog, but if you want you can see them here:
Photos from Salento Photos from our day in Cocora valley on horses Goodbye,
Omer
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Itzhak
non-member comment
hello
Beautiful views and a very good English by Omer! Have fun