If you like to wake up and smell the coffee, then the colourful little Colombian town of Salento set amid green Andean mountains and coffee plantations may be your dream destination. Colombia has a reputation for producing excellent coffee and is the third largest grower of coffee after Brazil and Vietnam, so we were surprised to find that drinking coffee in most of the country was a real disappointment.🤨 I must admit that coffee isn’t really my cup of tea but Caoimhin, a coffee connoisseur, was disgusted with the coffee and even switched to drinking tea, water or some of the delicious fresh fruit juices. The reason for this conundrum? Apparently, all the best coffee is exported, leaving the locals with the dregs and it doesn’t help that Colombians like to stew their coffee for hours (or possibly even days) to produce a dark bitter drink called café tinto. But not so in Salento, which has become a thriving tourist destination for coffee lovers from all over South America and further afield.
It is almost mandatory to do a coffee tour when in the town, tourists piling into dilapidated jeeps to jolt along dirt tracks to some of the numerous coffee farms doted in the picturesque hills. We opted to visit a small organic farm, Finca Don Ellias, which was both fun and educational. All the coffee grown in Colombia is arabica, which grows at between 1000 to 2000m above sea level and gives a smooth taste while the other type of bean, robusta, grows at less than 1000m and generally produces a more bitter drink. We walked among coffee plants, their berries turning from green to ruby red, growing on a steep hillside interspersed with banana, avocado and orange trees. These other trees provide shade, absorb water, and attract flies and pests away from the coffee plants. On Don Ellios’s farm, every process was manual from composting to picking to bean separation to roasting which meant that coffee tours were as important as selling the coffee. Did you know that high roasting is often used with poorer quality bean, making coffee that it stronger and more bitter but lacking in subtle complexity? Of course, climate change is an issue here. The two harvests a year in April/May and October/November which used to be as reliable as clockwork have become problematic with changing weather conditions, the coffee berries ripening haphazardly at different times.
The coffee ceremony which was part of the tour was quite elaborate involving heating cups, slowly adding water which was at 80C (never add boiling water!) to freshly ground coffee placed in a cotton filter known as ‘grandmother’s sock’. After two rounds of slow careful washing and discarding the liquid, our warm cups were filled with rich smooth coffee which smelt gorgeous and tasted pretty good even to my taste buds.
The other reason to visit Salento is to trek in the stunning Valle of Cocora and the Parque National Los Nevados. We went on a three-day hike with Salento Trekking which started in sunshine with a backdrop of spindly wax palms, the national tree of Colombia and the world’s tallest palm-they can reach sixty meters. Our hiking companions were a lovely young Belgian couple from Antwerp and our ‘English speaking’ guide, Fernes, whose grasp of English was probably worse than our Spanish. Our path took us through jungle with flickering hummingbirds and brightly coloured woodpeckers, up into pine and eucalyptus forest, where the trees groaned and creaked above us as we walked and onwards into cloud forest. We hiked down to the Rio Quindio, and sweated up the other side, crossing and recrossing the same river three times on rickety rope bridges, just a few pieces of wood tied together with a plank or two missing to keep things interesting. Cloud and mist shifted over the mountains in an ever-changing pattern but became denser and damper every afternoon until all views were obscured.
On the second day, we entered the paramo ecosystem, a wildly beautiful area of high-altitude grassland above the tree-line with a host of unique vegetation where the colour palette changed from various greens to honeyed gold. There we found the stunning Frailejones, a shrub that looks like a cactus with a flowering head of miniature sunflowers. Frailejones are extremely slow growing, about a centimeter a year and we were surrounded by plants of all ages but some were at least five hundred years old. We huffed and puffed up to the viewpoint on Cerro Chispas at 4408m and were treated to a vista of cloud and mountain. Then a majestic condor soared overhead with wings spread wide, and almost take our breath away. The beautiful bird symbolises power and grace but also has spiritual significance for the indigenous people who believe that it is the wise grandfather who watches from above, offers protection and regulates the energies of the world.
While the scenery was gorgeous and the various ecosystems were interesting, the fascinating part of trek was staying in the homes of the local people who live in these isolated Andean mountains. On the first night we stayed on a farm at 3500m, Finca Argentina. This simple homestead was merely a few connected windowless sheds where the only light came from some sheets of clear corrugated plastic in the roof. There were horses, pigs, geese, hens and a few sheep but this was an inaccessible place without roads where the way to get in or out was by narrow mule tracks.
Our welcome was lukewarm, and I can honestly say that it was the coldest house I have ever been in, a virtual wind tunnel where it was warmer to sit outside with the animals, a few pigs, hens, dogs and cats. It was the first time that we were cold since our arrival in Colombia despite wearing all the layers that we had been carrying around in our backpacks for two months. We arrived in dense fog, cold and damp, and we stayed that way for the evening although the mists cleared and the beauty of the valley revealed itself. The only warm spot was the cozy kitchen, where firewood was burning in a huge range that also served as the cooker, and music played on a radio but the trekkers were banned from there. The cramped bedroom had no electricity and three double-bed bunks which in theory could sleep twelve but our party of five were the only ones to sleep there on lumpy mattresses that night. In fairness there were plenty of thick blankets on the beds whose questionable laundry history didn’t bother us. Caoimhin, who was wearing shorts(that’s another story), took a blanket and draped it over himself in the house but was told that blankets couldn’t be taken out of the bedroom. Dinner was tasty, vegetable soup followed by rice and veg lentil stew, but portions were meager especially for appetites made ravenous by cold, exercise and mountain air. We were all tucked up in bed by 7.30pm for warmth more than tiredness. When Dorien, the Belgian girl, got up during the night to make her way through the house to the toilet using the eerie light of her phone, she found a scene of carnage outside the bedroom door, guts and feathers and a very satisfied fat cat. I was glad that I didn’t need to use the facilities during the night because I would have probably screamed the place down.
Our second night at another farm, Finca Jordan, could not have been more different. We again arrived at about 4pm in heavy fog which lifted almost immediately. We saw that we were surrounded by mountains, steep walls of grey rock with a waterfall tumbling down and a green field with pigs and hens and an Alsatian dog called Rocky who kept chasing a chicken despite the constant shouting of the woman of the house. There was birdsong and tumbling water and a riot of flowers bedecking the simple house, agapanthus, geraniums, roses, carnations and red-hot pokers. Our quarters were a green and blue shed with an attached bathroom and a shower with hot water…luxury after the previous night.Our host invited us into her kitchen, where we sat on a raised platform with our feet level with the stove. She plied us with coffee, tea and hot chocolate and piled our plates high with more food than we could possibly eat, brimming bowls of lentil and veg soup, rice and sliced avocado and vegetables (all of us were vegetarians). She fried long slices of bananas on her stove, covered them with slabs of her own homemade salty cheese, garnished them with spring onions from the garden. Her husband came in, put on a pair of croc slippers, and helped his wife by slicing a few veg while all the time, she talked without pause. Maybe it was the isolation that made her so chatty or maybe it was just her nature. This finca could also only be accessed by mule track, a four-to-five-hour rough trek down the mountain to get a few basic supplies.
After an ample breakfast, we headed off downhill from this haven of hospitality in a truly beautiful spot. On the way, Caoimhin got a rare sighting of a puma who stopped and stared at him on the winding stony path about a hundred meters ahead before disappearing into the trees. I got a mere glimpse of eyes and movement but that was all. The hike was very rewarding but as it was billed as a Mountain Wildlife Trek and we had an English-speaking guide, we expected to learn more about the flora and fauna. Unfortunately, our guide was not very knowledgeable, or interested in nature in any language. He just wanted to get the hike over as quickly as possible while we wanted to enjoy the enchanting scenery and spend as long as possible in nature, especially on the third day which was all downhill.
We stayed in two different places in Salento, in Hotel Natura Cocora for a few nights before the trek. This was a lovely rambling place with stunning views, a dusty kilometer and a half uphill from the town where we were welcomed and looked after by the very friendly and talkative Don Hugo, who ran the place almost single-handedly. The cleanliness was a little suspect and the bedroom with its old antique furniture was a little shabby with peeling paint but we loved the friendly atmosphere. When we came back, we stayed in town at a fabulous hostel, Atardecer de Salento with its cats, breezy wooden balcony and proximity to restaurants and bars.
After a final coffee in Salento, we were on our way south, a seven-hour bus journey to Popayan, a colonial city of churches and white buildings. Almost as soon as we stepped off the bus in the late afternoon, we were greeted by the smell of greenery, long green palm fronds and the lingering scent of incense. We were too late to see the Palm Sunday processions, but Popayan is very popular during Holy Week, Semana Santa. Colombians flock there for the religious ceremonies, the candle-lit possessions that occur every night during Holy Week and the market stalls that are set up on many of the lanes. On Monday evening, we joined the crowds to watch drumming bands slow- march through the ancient streets followed by numerous wooden platforms of religious icons, carried on the shoulders of men called ‘cargueros.’ The procession was long and slow, following the same route past the many churches in a tradition that has gone on continuously since the sixteenth century. Although there were several thunderstorms in Popayan on Sunday evening and Monday afternoon, the rain held off during the nighttime procession.
We are about to hop on another bus to take us on a partly-dirt road to San Augustin, another small town in the Andes which is close to some pre-Columbian Archaeological sites and I’m sure that we will find some more Easter traditions.
Felices Pascuas
Gracias por leer esto
Till next time……have fun xx
marienoonanblog 