Mercure Hotel Ibague Altamira

We drove the short but steep drive up towards Armenia, making our way to the Valle de Cocora. According to the Lonely Planet, the bible of cheap travel, this valley was a very unique place in the world. It sits at about 3,000 mts. so the hills are surrounding in cloud forest. The valley is lush green with tall mountain peaks on either side. The Switzerland of Colombia. The unique thing about this valley is there are many Wax Palms that thrive here. So the ...

Wednesday 9th September<br>Arrived in Armenia at the ungodly hour of 4:30 and had to wait for a conneciton to the small town of Salento. Finally get to Salento at 6am, knackered and slightly ****** off after a horror night bus ride.<br>Didnt do a hell of alot due to being tired. Looked around town, beautiful but quite small, read and planned where to visit in Ecuador and studied some espanol.<br>I had some sweet trout for lunch, there is a trout farm right near Salento, so I ...

We rose early, 6-30am,tried to be as quiet as possible which was difficult with the gaps over the doors, and the eager excitement of an 8 and a 10 year old. Christie whizzed up a stunning smoothie from our fruit, and we had cereals. We don't often have the chance to have cereals on this trip so it was a treat. We headed for the jeep which was to leave the centre of town at7-30am. There was no guarantee we would get a ride, so getting there early was essential. As it turned out ...

We rose around 8am.We checked out because we would be heading to Solento later in the day but in the meantime we would be going to the Parque Del Café which was nearby. The landlady was happy to look after our big bulky bags whilst we headed for the theme park. She also was very vocal in making sure we caught a collectivo because those blood sucking taxi drivers will overcharge us $25mil pesos, or she said something like that. <br><br>We went to the nearby busy road indicated ...

i left bogota a week ago thinking i was going to explore the whole coffee region, and visit different cities and all that good stuff. but i didnt. i arrived in Salento, and never left. the town sits on top of a hill surrounded by the most amazing landscapes. the Andes mountains are truly magical. and it wasnt only the town that kept me there, it was the hostel i stayed at, called Hostal Estrella Sin Fronteras. the owner is named Ruben, a 47 year old man with the ...

hello.<br>i am now in a town in La Zona Cafetera de Colomba called Salento, which is about 9 hours from bogota by bus. the rest of my time in bogota was really cool. by far my favorite part of town was downtown, the old part of the city. very typical colonial style architecture, and an amazing environment. during the weekend i was also able to experience a salsa music festival, which was amazing. i have never really been to a salsa concert, especially a festival. ive ...

Today we went to the main attraction in Salento -- the Valle de Cocora. This area contains a preserve with a significant area of untouched cloud forest. It is, however, most famous for its wax palms, which tower over all the other trees.<br><br>We arrived in Cocora on a jeep from Salento at about 10, and started out on the circuit hike. The first part of the hike is through farmland, where all of the trees have been removed ...

After arriving on the night bus, the logical thing to do was go on a tour of a coffee plantation. We couldn't get the English tourin the morning because the guide (Tim from the plantation house) had to go to Armenia on business. We had heard good things about Don Elias, a coffee finca and hour's walk away. It was a nice walk through the countryside, with many butterflies and pretty countryside. The tour itself was a little ...

- We did a revision to our plans today; originally we were going to go to San Augustin and Tierradentro. Unfortunately we found that we could not get our vehicle to Tierradentro because the road is too narrow and as a result it would be something like ten hours driving to get to San Augustin and then we would have to return. As a result we decided that we would just set off to drive to ...

Last night we went to Ibague, a town ´just´ (four hours) outside Bogota, where Eli grew up..its about the distance from corringham to Birmingham, but its through the mountains,we left at about 4.. and it was great to see some of Colombia's scenery, as in Bogota you could be in any city in the world really... The are is kind of a mix of mountainous areas and kind of jungle trees, but as the altitude ...