Beccy and I traveled to Salento together, a fairly easy 6 hour bus ride. It was a little scary at times (lots of curves, not many railings), but the driver played a couple movies to distract/entertain us.
Salento is a beautiful town surrounded by mountains in Zona Cafetera, the coffee region of Colombia. I was thinking about staying at a place a bit outside of town, but our new friend Jenna has just been here, and recommended her hostel, Luciérnaga. We ended up loving it, comfortable beds, nice views, live music every night, and the food is INCREDIBLE. Literally the best food I've had in Colombia. They even have kale, just like being back in SF!
Avocado toast with fried eggs and a view
Anyhow, there is much more to Salento than just good breakfast. The main attraction here is Valle de Cocora, where you can hike to see a forest of wax palms, which can grow to incredible heights. You load up into a jeep, and drive a quick 20 minutes or so to the trailhead.
The hike is about 4-5 hours, and parts of it were pretty hard. I'd like to think the altitude was making me tired, and not my out-of-shapeness. If you go the usual direction, you hike through a valley, and then up into the mountains, with an optional stop at a hummingbird house (not that impressive), then loop around for what is supposed to be stunning views of the valley.
So many shades of green!
Unfortunately for us, the clouds really came in as we reached the coolest part of the hike. In some ways it made it even more interesting, the mist gave it a dramatic feel.
It was not warm. We took off our jackets to look cuter in the photo :P
AND THEN it started raining and thunder-ing (and, I assume lightining-ing somewhere but we didn't see it). So we hurried up through the last bit of the hike, getting pretty wet along the way!
Having now been here a couple of days, the clouds always seem to come in in the afternoon, so if I were to do the hike again, I'd actually reverse the order (which is easy enough to do) to hit the view part in the morning sunshine.
Our second day in Salento, we did the other popular tourist activity- tour of a coffee farm! On the recommendation of some Canadian guys, we decided to go to Finca Don Eduardo. Thanks to Google maps being wildly inaccurate, we started walking about 20 minutes down the freeway until I decided to check out the coffee tour's website and found that it's actually right in town: 5 minutes, not 40, from our hostel.
The tour was informative, and the guide was the owner, a kooky Brit named Tim. We trekked down an extremely muddy path, and learned about different types of coffee and the process from bean to cup, and of course, got to try some of the coffee from the farm.
Roasting the coffee (not our guide)
Required coffee farm attire: rubber boots
After the tour it was time for Beccy to head back to Medellin in time to party on the weekend. I walked around the town a bit- it's pretty cute, and there's a street with a bunch of little restaurants and souvenir shops. I picked up a little framed watercolor painting from a local artist, which is probably ill-advised given how packed and heavy my backpack already is.
Tomorrow, I am flying off to the islands for my last week in Colombia- I'll stay over one night in San Andreas before spending three nights in the super remote Isla Providencia.