A step back in time..short streets, long memories!
Trip Start
Mar 25, 2008
1
6
54
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Salento,
Colombia
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The day is quite overcast altho there has been no rain...the bus ride is the usual scenic trip in itself through small towns/villages the bus fare about $1.50 which is fairly reaosnable for the hours drive..:o).
On arrival I see that this is really a very very small town....it takes about 2 mins for me to walk around the town square....all the buildings have been brightly painted and it has an old world cowboy town feel about it. After all there are men dressed like cowboys standing on street corners with their ponchos on having big ole' chin wags with each other. There are also men on horses riding around with their loyal dog at their heals....it doesnt look like a set up...this is what this town looks like on a daily basis I believe. They say Salento is a small town of short streets but long memories.....there are park benches outside every shop and people ...mainly old people are sitting around watching the world go by.
There are lots of tourist shops and restaurants...billiard or pool halls which seem to have their fill of cowboys inside playing pool or poker with each other...and this is at 10am in the morning.....all the ladies seem to be stopping and chatting to each other on their way to and from their daily business and the children are playing simple games in the street with a shared ball or bike.
Willy's Jeeps for hire
All in all it comes across as a very sweet willte villiage.The main street leads to the bottom of a hill with stairs rising to the top...the stations of the cross statues are staggered along the way up the staircase and a cross is at the top of the hill overlooking the whole area and town...they say you can see a long way from here on a clear day....I actually only walked half way up as the clouds surrounded me and I could see nothing...so I clicked off a few quick photos and desended back to town once again.
Strolling back along the main street... in my abscence a film crew had arrived... so I perched on a park bench outside the butchers shop and watched the making of the film...I think it was for a kids show...the acting was very exagerated and the content not really very grown up...altho having watched a few soapies that were on Spanish TV the exagerated acting thing seems to be normal!!!!
There is a trout farm in the region so lunch consited of the local fare Trout!!...which was really yummy....I picked a restarant that had wondows out onto the town square so I could watch the comings and goings of everyone. I stayed here a few hours eating lunch, drinking coffee and reading my book...a very chilled out mid afternoon break from walking around.
I decided that I needed to go and see the national plant of Colombia...the Crocos Wax Palm....so I enlisted the services of a jeep driver George....now George spoke Spanish and no English...and we all know I am the complete opposite...Geogre also reminded me of Kiwi Mat the mozzie plane pilot from both Cayman and Vanuatu...for those that know him check out the photos and tell me I'm right!!...Anyway he was very friendly and was telling me all sorts of things as we drove out the where the palms grow....these palms are like 200 ft tall!!!!!
Anyway...Mat tells me all about the trees we pass...luckily I knew what a Eucalyptus tree was and a pine tree...he picked two words I did understand!!! Yay!!...we saw waterfalls and cows being milked in the paddock by the old farmer into those old silver milk urns I think we used to have up the farm.
Mostly it was a normal road but we also had to do some off road too...I liked Georges jeep the old style Willes...like Brett used to own ...except in much better condition!!!...anyway we went out to the trout farm ....not that I am interested in any sort of fish farming I am not worried where they come from so long as they are fresh and taste good...so I didn't hang there very long...I think I have fished for trout before somewhere in the south of West Oz a long time ago!
I managed to turn George into a photographer and he made me laugh as he was prepared to get on the ground in the damp grass to try and get the shots I wanted....he was funny!!!...bless him! After climbing thru a few barbed wire fences and getting the pics I wanted we crusied back into town...timing was great as it just started to rain as we arrived and the clouds came rolling in again...a white out.
Town Square Salento
Time for another coffee for me and a short wait for the bus to be ready to go back to Armenia ...last bus 4pm...time was 3.50...so my escape was perfect. I can't quite picture what Slaento would be like in teh eveving to stay there I imagine if you were with friends you would go and shoot pool and drink a few beers after havign a trout dinner in one of the many restaurants. It didn't look like women went into the pool halls so much so my night might have been a lot quieter if I had stayed here.Back to Armenia to try and discover another place to have dinner in the town with few restaurants!!! I decided on a little hole in the wall not far from that chicken shop where I ordered one of the three things on the menu...it was a bit like a steak sandwich...served in in pita bread....and I have to say it beat the pizza hands down!!! The one thing I struggle with here in teh food department...is the complete lack of veggies...everything is meat served with potato and rice...not potato or rice...AND!!!!...the closest thing to veggies on a menu so far has been colslaw...so mayo soaked!!!...hmmm...now you might see why I raved about WOK in earlier postings!!!
Tonight I dont care that I dont have hot water I snuggle down in bed and watch TV.
Tomorrow I take the bus to Medellin which is about 8 hours!
