Lovely Salento and the beginnings of our journey to the Pacific Coast

We find ourselves back in another city called Medellin as I write, after a beautiful stay in Salento. The day after I last wrote we moved down onto the farm, La Finca Don Eduardo, to stay in the amazing high up bamboo hut called The Penthouse. Far from the velvety luxuriousness that the name 'penthouse' conjures, the actual hut and farm were very basic. What was penthousey about the place were the views! Right outside our open windows were the sweeping luscious slopes of the Valle de Cocora, the multitude of stars at night and the blue skies in the mornings. High up on the ridge line opposite the farm were the remnants of Pablo Escobar's estate, complete with the empty cages in which he used to keep white tigers and eagles, and his look out tower!

Our first sight of The Penthouse came when we took a coffee tour down to the farm with the owner Tim. He was a funny character full of stories, the kind of storyteller whom you could listen to for hours, and we did! I actually found that which we learned, about how they grew, picked, processed and roasted coffee, a lot more interesting than I thought I would. Other countries process the green beans differently but it turns out that the way they do it in Colombia is a bit of an art form and extremely labour intensive. Unfortunately for us though (yes even for a non coffee drinker like me) Colombia exports 90% of their good coffee but as it happens even the second rate stuff is actually really tasty. A LOT more tasty than nescafe et al. I found myself drinking a couple of cups a day from the freshly roasted and ground beans when we were staying on the farm, and not actually going too mental. There are two types of coffee beans Robusto and Arabica beans. These beans were Arabica and they have more taste and less caffeine, so I was only climbing the walls and humming to myself for the first couple of days! The farm workers showed up at about 7:30am every morning and set to work planting new coffee plants or machete-ing down weeds etc. (Everyone - even some people in cities, seem to carry machetes...) They were really friendly and constantly kept offering us fresh coffee. Talking to them also afforded us a chance to practice our Spanish, which at best is of pigeon in nature, still, we're trying! There wasn't enough coffee for us to buy some beans from the farm directly but we were told that a guy named Jesus up in town sells coffee that has some beans in from the farm. So were tottered up there and bought a bag. It smells amazing! Samly has the bag in his rucksack and so his clothes will smell wonderful for the rest of Colombia until we fly to Buenas Aires and the bag will vacuum pack itself. Nice!

Our first and second day in Salento were spent wandering the friendly little streets and sitting in the plaza watching the goings on. Men washing horses, women cooking up yucca bread outside on old oil drum BBQs, kids chasing each other (all the little girls had roller blades on strangely!) and of course the hundreds of different perros wandering around. The dogs we have encountered are so humanlike. They wander around, communicate with each other, join you as you walk for a bit and seem to understand you when you talk to them! I love them! We also made it up a LOT of steps to the top of the hill at the end of town. From there we could see all over Salento and then behind us stretched out the undulating high hills of the Valle de Cocora. There were a couple of sets of swings up there, the most beautifully located swings I have ever experienced! So we sat on them for quite some time. We found a really tasty place to eat called Esquinia Lucy in town. I imagine it was like eating Colombian home cooking. We had the corrientes, which is a set meal of a soup and then a plate full of tasty food including plantain, different types of beans, tasty scrambled egg, different types of breads, rice and lentils. Samly had the trout as well which a local dish and he really liked it. Eating at Lucy's was even cheaper than cooking for ourselves! Yumble.

On our third day in Salento and second day on the farm we went on a trek through the Valle de Cocora. The first half we trekked for four hours through lush green hills spotted with the tall, lonely wax palm soldiers and cloud forest until we made it up to a little nature reserve called Acaime and an old ladies house. She was a funny old lady, smoking cigarettes and loudly barking at you to ask what you wanted to drink. Samly had a coffee and I had a bowl of delicious hot chocolate with a lump of salty cheese in it. Disgusting as it sounds it was actually quite tasty. It was a variation on the traditional drink called aguapenela which is a hot drink made from sugar cane and water into which you place a similar lump of cheese and wait for it to melt before eating/drinking it. Samly was not into it but I thought it was quite interesting. I'd definitely try it again. There were also lots of little humming birds zooming everywhere in flashes of bright colours and trying to take photos of these little guys was almost impossible! After this rest we climbed a lot higher up the path called La Montana and when we reached the top there was an old man standing there waiting for us to sign his book. He had a little house there, made of colourfully painted wood which had fantastic music blaring from it on what sounded like an old gramophone. All the music we're hearing in Colombia so far, from out of people's houses and on buses is really good. For two hours on the way down the valley we saw fantastic views, beautiful to our eyes but the low flying cloud made taking good photos quite difficult. But then I suppose it's almost impossible to capture even half of the beauty of a buena vista in a camera anyways. When we had made it down to the bottom of the valley we had to wait about an hour until there were enough people to fill a jeep. Then I stood up on the little platform at the back and clung to the bar for a slow motion rollercoaster ride all the way back to Salento. The views were amazing!

That evening when we returned to the farm we found that we had a neighbour. He was a British chap who suggested that we should go into town and play the traditional game called Tejo. Now I had read about this game and it sound right up my street. You stand at the end of an alley holding a large metal puck like object. Then you aim to throw the metal puck at an small area of clay in the ground in which a small metal ring was embedded. On top of this metal ring are placed four small parcels of gun powder. Your aim should be to hit the parcels of gun powder and make them explode! Fantastic hey? YES! When the guy was explaining how to play it he exploded a gun powder parcel right by our feet and all four of us nearly wet ourselves it was that loud! We played this game for about an hour, steadily getting more accurate despite drinking more beer. I managed to explode three parcels, and as I thought I would, I ended up thinking that this was definitely my sort of game. Very satisfying to hit a target and for said target to EXPLODE! Brilliant.

We left the beautiful farm and the town of Salento the next morning to head to the city of Medellin. We came here via Armenia making sure that we had seen all three of the towns (although they were quite large towns) in the 'coffee triangle', Manizales, Periera and Armenia. From what we've seen of Medellin so far it's quite a lovely city, although I am hankering after getting back to the countryside. We spent yesterday organising our flight and trip to the Pacific coast. We will be taking a light aircraft (VERY excited about this as neither of us have been on one before) over the jungle into El Choco and landing in Bahia Solano. Then we will be trying to get a lift to El Valle to stay on the beach. There is only one road in El Choco (the entire region) so this is going to be quite an experience. Apparently only twenty people travel there and back a day (the only safe way to get to Bahia Solano from Medellin or vice versa is by plane) and there are hardly any tourists there. In fact we haven't met anyone who has been so far, I expect because of the expense and the fact that most people we have met are travelling by themselves and quite fast through the country. We will be quite safe as there is a huge military base and soldiers and police everywhere apparently. This will be a definite test of our Spanish and our hand signals!

We have been in Colombia for a little over a week now and the haze of confusion that has been following us around due to money calculations, language comprehension and the processes of things, is starting to lift. We are beginning to reflect on our experiences in the country. So far Colombia is a lot more developed and Americanised that I expected. Granted we have mostly seen large cities, but the roads are really good even high up in the Andes, the bus company workers all have uniforms (something I didn't experience in Peru and Ecuador) and the buses themselves are REALLY comfy. They play films and music which makes me think of old couples dancing in their living rooms to their gramophones. It's not as cheap as we though it would be and we will be eating in quite a lot especially after our little expense to the Pacific Coast, but Samly is such an amazing cook - it's like travelling with a Michellen starred chef! Plus the fruit and veg all taste amazing here. We have been trying lots of odd looking fruit and cooking with really fresh veg. Pineapples are so tasty sometimes I don't think my mouth can take it! We have only had a few clear nights in the last week but because Salento is in the country we could see so many stars! I haven't been able to find the Southern Cross yet but I will hopefully one day soon. We went to sleep looking at the stars out of our open windows on the farm. It also rains each day. It only rains for a short time but it absolutely pours. Here in Medellin that is good because it's quite hot here so the rain freshens everywhere up quite a bit. There are condors everywhere, swooping and looping and whirling around. Samly got quite obsessed with them, trying to take literally hundreds of photos in which they all ended up looking like dots! They are quite mesmerising to watch though, especially over the Valle de Cocora. We have met a lot of lovely people, nearly all of them are travelling by themselves. We've been hearing stories about the places we will be going and getting tips on everything. It's nearly been ten years since I was last in Peru and Ecuador and hearing about how those places have changed is a bit strange as they've been cemented in my memory for so long. Faye, Jude and Phil, you will not be happy to hear that Cusco has been so gringofied that there is even a MacDonalds there now! Yuck. Also apparently Quito is a really unsafe city now, but from what I can remember I felt really safe there... Oh the ebbs and flows.


Right I better hop off now as I have prattled on for a LONG time. Today we are going to go and ride the metro cable (a metro car that turns into a cable car) which makes its way down through the mountains that flank the city and on which the favelas are built up each side. We also might visit some botanical gardens. Then we will have to start packing for our Pacific Coast trip! Next time we speak I will hopefully be able to tell you about all the whales and turtles we have seen and how flipping mental flying in a tiny plane was!

Love to you all as ever and keep well,
See you here next week!
clara y samuel xxx


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