We were especially looking forward to Salento, because here we would not be spending the time as a pair but together with dear Laura from Karlsruhe and her brother Alex, who are travelling Colombia at the same time as us!
Coordinating the where and above all the when was a little turbulent. Contrary to my original assumption that we would only set foot on Colombian soil towards the end of Laura and Alex’s holiday, we were in fact almost done with our round trip by the time the two of them had even arrived. But since Jan and I took a little speed out of our journey and Laura and Alex picked up the pace, we finally managed to conjure four nights in Colombia’s coffee region out of one coffee together in Medellín!
Despite our awkward journey from Jardín we arrived in Salento in the afternoon. Instead of taxis or tuk-tuks, in Salento you are ferried about in jeeps, so-called Willys, which Colombia bought from the Americans after the Second World War. They have been in service in the coffee region ever since, mastering rutted tracks, steep climbs and descents and heavy loads. In Salento they carry up to 13 passengers in addition to the driver!
After an arepa and a coconut lemonade from one of the many street food stalls, we jumped into one of these jeeps to our slightly out-of-town Hostel La Serrana.
At the hostel we waited eagerly for Laura and Alex. What would the reunion be like after nine months? The first taste of home?
What a question! It was as though we had last seen each other yesterday. Only with more joy at seeing each other again. It really is mad: it felt completely normal as we strolled through Colombian streets together.
Over a little bottle of wine served in true style in porcelain cups (the hostel kitchen was not blessed with glasses) we spent the evening catching up on all the news of recent days. Happily, thanks to the blog and social media, we did not have to recap the whole of the past eight months!
We enjoyed our first day together by strolling into the centre of Salento about two kilometres away. With every glance at the landscape you sense that this is a particularly beautiful place.
Since the Colombians were celebrating their independence that day, there was plenty going on in the market square and the tourist lane: the military was patrolling, colourful mini jeeps drove around and an enormous Colombian flag was carried across the square.
The festive, exuberant mood was catching, so we let ourselves be talked into having a group portrait drawn by a caricaturist.
Jan’s and my time was slowly drawing to a close not only in Colombia but in Central and South America, so we made the most once more of everything we had grown fond of in recent months. Above all: the many delicious, exotic fruits that elsewhere either taste less good, are far more expensive, or simply do not exist.
The time strolling along Salento’s tourist traps flew by in no time at all, so we had to hurry over the final stretch to make our coffee tour on time. Colombia’s coffee region is enormous and Salento only one of many places to visit a coffee plantation. If you spend a few days here, though, it is a must.
Since we did not want to be knocked out of our leisurely rhythm on our first day together, we opted for a small but excellent tour of the plantation of Don Elias, a rustic, long-established Colombian. His coffee harvest does not go into commercial sale but can only be bought by visitors to his plantation, and of course covers his own consumption. He keeps only the second-class beans for himself, the good beans go on sale - as everywhere in Colombia.
I really wanted to buy a packet of coffee directly from a coffee plantation. Sadly Don Elias’s packaging design was so clumsily done that my marketing heart could not bring itself to make the purchase.
For the next day we had planned the must-do for Salento visitors: a walk through the Cocora Valley. But the walk was not blessed with good fortune from the moment we woke up. Jan’s cold had caught up with him again and he decided to stay in bed. Even though he assumed that on a scale from senior citizens’ outing to Himalayan ascent, the difficulty of the walk was at about the level of a Sunday stroll. Laura was not feeling much better either, but she put her faith in the Colombian range of remedies.
The cold tea really did work in no time and we climbed into the jeep towards the Cocora Valley in good spirits. At 30 km/h the driver pushed the engine of his Willy to its pain threshold while we enjoyed the sun-kissed green rolling hills with cows grazing contentedly on them. Yes, it hardly gets more idyllic!
And it was into exactly this picturesque landscape that we walked for the first few minutes. Sadly not alone: the most popular day trip attracts hundreds of tourists every day.
Soon the path led into a cloud forest where we followed a river uphill, crossing it again and again over several bridges.
After two hours of walking we took - involuntarily, admittedly - the turning to a hummingbird sanctuary. Here wildlife photography was finally fun, because Laura had brought my camera out to me. With a phone camera wildlife photography is genuinely a struggle, since you have to get very, very close. That still works for caterpillars, since they cannot flee so quickly, but hummingbirds!?!
Back on the regular route it went uphill again for 900 m. At the highest point of the walk we were at almost 3000 m. We had somehow not registered that at all, so much for Jan’s classification as a “Sunday stroll”…
We had been going for four hours by now and there was still no sign of the famous wax palms, the reason you do the walk in the first place. From the highest point the route went downhill on a wide forest path. After five hours the path finally opened out onto grassy hills from which hundreds of wax palms rose 60 m into the air.
Soon the first kiosk came into sight. We ventured to ask how far it was to the end of the trek. Our understanding of the makeshift map was that we surely had another hour of walking ahead.
Three minutes.
What? That cannot be. So we asked somebody else, a bit more precisely: we mean where the restaurants are and the jeeps leave for Salento.
Three minutes. Just over there.
Hoorayyy! Exhausted and with sun-reddened cheeks we jumped into the nearest jeep to Salento.
We should really have had another full day together in Salento, but you have not really been to South America if everything runs like clockwork.
Our plan was, after four nights in Salento, to fly from nearby Pereira to Bogotá, from where we would head at midnight for our next destination. Sadly it turned out that Bogotá airport, and domestic flights in particular, are repeatedly subject to massive delays if not outright cancellations. We had planned enough buffer between the flights, but since five hours of delay is the rule rather than the exception, the undertaking seemed rather risky to us. The long-haul flight was simply too expensive to gamble with.
Alternative: the bus. Travelling by bus in Colombia is simple and cheap, but as a rule a time-consuming undertaking. For the 300 km between Armenia (the nearest larger town to Salento) and Bogotá, the fastest connection is 8 hours. In heavy traffic that easily becomes 12, if not 14 hours!
Even so, the bus seemed to us the safer option for catching our flight in time. And since daytime bus journeys often take twelve hours, we decided with heavy hearts to cut our time with Laura and Alex short by one night and take the night bus to Bogotá. To make matters worse, that doubled our travel time from about 25 hours to 50 hours!
So on our last day together we were not exactly bursting with energy, but did as we had on the first day and strolled through Salento once more. Drank coffee, bought coffee and let the coffee tourist trap snap shut (alright, only I fell for it…).
Towards evening Jan and I set off first to Armenia and from there by night bus to Bogotá. How glad I was that we had not chosen the more time-critical (but better rested) daytime option. We crawled at a snail’s pace up and down the mountains behind a queue of lorries. After 1.5 hours we had covered only a tiny fraction of the route.
Miraculously we still arrived in Bogotá on time after eight hours on the bus. Completely sleep-deprived, though, since with all the bends and the constant braking and accelerating you are not lulled to sleep. On top of that the air conditioning kicked in every time the temperature in the bus threatened to rise above 16 degrees. I was armed with a jumper, scarf and poncho, but Jan had to brave the cold in T-shirt and shorts. As if we had not experienced enough over-air-conditioned bus rides in Mexico to know better. In case anybody is wondering why it is always Jan who catches the colds.
In Bogotá we were lucky enough to be allowed into a hostel room despite the ungodly hour, and so got at least a little sleep during our 50-hour journey. A night bus, a whole day to kill, a night flight and various hours of onward travel would otherwise have meant we would definitely have spent the first days in - the tension mounts - Canada asleep.
And so we also had the chance to see a bit of Bogotá, which we had actually crossed off our list of destinations. And how better to explore a city in the shortest possible time than on a free walking tour?
This time as well the guide had plenty to tell. For instance that Mick Jagger gave a concert in Bogotá a few months ago and, strolling through the streets, wanted to try the popular wafer sandwiches. The lucky vendor made a double profit out of it: not only is he said to have thoroughly ripped Mick off (he had to pay the equivalent of 3 dollars instead of 1), but of course he immediately advertised far and wide that his wafers were the best. Colombians are not shy about a little fibbing in favour of their own business, though, and so to this day every stall is adorned with a poster of Mick Jagger holding a wafer in his hand.
