Happy Birthday Colombia

With the Colombian bicentennial fast approaching I arrived in Cali, a city supposed proud of its reputation as the party centre of Colombia. First night after arriving I decided to check out some of the nightlife here and was left with unamazed, perhaps there is more local places that are better or perhaps only for the weekend but where we ended up going felt like a US college town with bars all along the street, the live music however was pretty good. Amazingly with a holiday the next day there were not many locals out and about and those that were, were simply drinking and chatting...not what I imagined from the so called "Salsa capital of South America".

The next day it was off to the main park to watch the festivities which started (and bizarrely ended) with a large concert featuring some of the best bands in Colombia. This was definitely worth the effort to get down here and the park was absolutely crowded with locals and tourists alike. Again strangely there was not much in the way of dancing, other than the bizarre display on stage! The party was quite subdued with everybody merely content to watch the concert and eat and drink a bit in the park with the concert (and evening) finishing about 7pm.

After a couple of days of rest (rather than party) in Cali I decided to head off to my next destination, Salento a nice little town in the coffee region of Colombia, supposedly a favourite for locals also. It’s quite amazing to be in Columbia where it seems the majority of tourists here on weekends are actually Colombians themselves who are taking the opportunity to see their country which is nice, as well as unusual for South America.

Since we had a large contingent leaving from our hostel we decided that it would be easier if we hired some private transport to go directly there instead of taking the longer route via Armenia on the buses. How wrong we were! What should have been a simple 2.5 hour trip tuned into a 5 hour exercise as the driver came ill prepared, forcing him to return to the bus station as well as stop multiple times along the way, including apparently to buy a CD! Finally we arrived at the bus station….in Armenia no less! From here we jumped back on the bus system and arrived in Salento to find we were too late and our reservations had been given away – not a great start!

Still we found a hostel and all was well and we got up the next morning to take a hike around the gorgeous green Cacora valley, fertile for coffee but also famous for giant palm trees. The weather took pity on us and produced a gorgeous day with just a hint of precipitation every now and again to cool the air. This left us to wander along (and several times across) the river and enjoy the plethora of green on display. The scenery is simply gorgeous and once we got up into the hill looking over the rolling green valleys below it looked perfect for a golf course……. I wonder if anyone else has thought of that. After climbing to the highest point on offer we descended back through the valleys to take in the land of the giant palm trees with some supposedly over 50m tall, really quite amazing. A short walk and a fun little jeep ride that involved us standing on the step at the back and holding on saw us arrive back in Salento just in time for lunch.

After lunch we took in one of the fantastic coffees on offer in Jesus café, as you would expect in the coffee zone the coffee was fantastic. The best thing about this cafe however is the care with which the owner prepares the coffee. This culminates into him creating a unique chocolate art on top of the foam, a simple and really nice touch to coffee at any time.
The next day it was off to visit a coffee finca, which is basically a coffee plantation to have a tour of the coffee making process and hopefully take in some more good coffee.

The next day it was off to visit a coffee finca, which is basically a coffee plantation to have a tour of the coffee making process and hopefully take in some more good coffee. The walk out to the coffee finca itself was well worth it with more beautiful hills and rolling valleys on display as we wound our way through the farms to a small little village about an hour away.

The coffee finca was absolutely gorgeous with its setting amongst the lush green valley’s overlooking river being almost perfect. Set amongst the 40 hectares they had about five hundred thousand coffee plants and walking through the area was quite relaxing. The tour discussed the coffee making process but not in the most amount of detail but still it was nice and with a fresh cup of coffee at the end thoroughly worth it. The amazing thing was that the guy mentioned he had very little coffee for sale, which we thought must have been a joke or a mis-communication but as it turned out he only had four bags for sale, about 1.5 kilos….at a coffee farm! Still we were able to work it out and each left with a fresh bag of coffee each. Later than day it was time to head up to Medellin and check out the stomping ground of the world’s most famous criminal of the 20th century, Pablo Escobar.