Salento, Filandia and Valle de Cocora
Trip Start
Jul 22, 2008
1
24
26
Trip End
Jun 20, 2009
Salento,
Quindío,
Colombia
Friday, June 5, 2009
Salento is an absolutely beautiful wee village. It's full of colour and life and the locals are very friendly. It's no wonder almost everyone doing the coffee tour stops off here for at least a few days.
Yesterday we went hiking in the Valle de Cocora. It was once a FARC stronghold, but today you can hike in it without a guide as it's perfectly safe and all the paths are signposted. After an early start we drove up through the clouds to the starting point in one of the local jeeps - which the locals actually call "willys", and caused me to snicker like a schoolkid ("ha ha willys!"). Unfortunately neither Alex nor Isaure speaks the good old British variety of English and were left looking dumbfounded until I explained what willys were to British people, by which time it wasn't that funny anymore
At the hostel with Isa
. Anyway, we had a route which the lady at the hostel recommended so we decided to do that one - not realising it was a bloody 15 kilometer hike on a route that even Sly Stallone in that movie "Cliffhanger" would have quailed at! It was fun though, just very, very hard. I thought my legs were just going to snap off at one point but my pride kept forcing me upwards. I wasn't going to give up, not while I could still walk - a possibility that seemed to be getting slimmer by the minute. About half way up we encountered a little old lady's house. For 3000 pesos she was happily serving hot drinks to the foreigners who came puffing by. She loved us because we could speak Spanish (a lot of people who come here don't, or don't understand the accent) and me even more because I lent her my phone so she could call her husband - who had the family's only mobile phone - to tell him to bring some more panela (raw sugar cane) up the mountain because she was running out. A hilarious conversation ensued where she yelled into the phone everything she needed and everything she already had. You could probably hear her a good few miles away if you listened...she wasn't used to using the phone and I had to dial the number for her. Anyway, she made us nice big mugs of agua de panela (basically sugar water made from the raw cane) which is what they drink here in the mountains to warm up, along with a big hunk of salty cheese from the larder. By the time we were ready to go again I was almost hyperactive with the sugar. This quickly diminished as the path got harder and the air got thinner and I had to force myself to the top of the mountain, determined not to turn back. The view will be worth it, I told myself. Turns out the view was indeed not worth it as the clouds came down and just about obscured everything that wasn't 10 feet in front of me! I did get to have my picture taken by the sign that said I'd reached the top of the mountain. After that it was plain sailing as everything was downhill and we arrived back to the jeeps cold and wet but proud of ourselves
Salento's local team playing in the plaza
. Then we all made a dash back to the hostal and the hot showers!!So today I woke up and all but fell out of bed as my legs spasmed with the unusual stress of exercise from the day before, and we made our way to the village of Filandia, about a half hour from Salento. It looks a lot like Salento, except it's not as well kept and tourists don't really come here, which is a shame because they've got some really nice artesan shops which are cheaper than Salento and we also discovered this wee coffee place which won "best cup of coffee 2008" in the whole region. The owners were very nice people who invited us into their little workshop, gave us all coffee to try, showed us how they processed their coffee and their plans for the future to put Filandia and its coffee on the map. I bought two bags of coffee to add to my growing collection. I'm starting to get a little scared about the amount of stuff I'm bringing back to Northern Ireland with me! If your suitcase is filled with nothing but bags of coffee, bottles of aguardiente and indigenous jewelry, is it still "nothing to declare"??
Anyway, after Filandia we headed back to Salento to walk around one last time and so Alex could buy the rest of the artesan shops that she hadn't bought the first time round! I don't even know how she's going to get all that stuff back to Canada. Maybe she can hire a truck...
So the plan is now to head to the village of Santa Rosa de Cabal tonight and spend the night there and head to Manizales tomorrow. Turns out Manizales is a good 4 hours away from here so we're going to break it up by going to Santa Rosa tonight. Then the girls are flying back up to Barranquilla from Manizales on Sunday night and I'm spending the night in the town before getting the bus up to Medellin on Monday.
