Salento, Colombia, South America

I got up this morning after a pretty good night’s sleep in the dorm, and had a great breakfast to start the day. The breakfast was included in the room rate at the hostel and included scrambled eggs, bread, fruit and coffee. It was really good, as expected. This hostel is great!

A group of seven of us left the hostel at 9am and headed off for our walk to the coffee farm. Our group consisted of two Aussies, one English, one German, one American, one American-Kiwi, and one American-Scot. It was a pretty eclectic group. We were told it was going to be a two hour walk to get to Finca de Sacha Mama, but it ended up being about one hour and forty minutes. We even had a group of three dogs that followed us from the beginning of our walk, right up to the coffee farm. They weren’t allowed in though, so I guess they just turned around and walked back together, like a little gang.

We were greeted by Pedro, the owner of the farm, and he was the nicest man in the world. He hardly spoke any english, but he had a constant smile on his face, and we were able to have conversations with him with some broken Spanglish, so it worked out really well. We had a small cup of coffee and some water when we first arrived, and just enjoyed the view from his nice little house on the hill. He doesn’t have any cats or dogs, because he likes all the wild birds coming around, so we sat and bird watched for a while. It was so relaxing, and exactly what we needed after that long walk.

We started our tour around 11am and he took us through the woods on his property and told us about a lot of the flora that is found in his woods. This isn’t a coffee plantation like I had previously thought, it is just a piece of land that a man owns that happens to have some wild coffee plants on it. Pedro only has about 300 plants on his property growing amongst all the other trees and plants. It was a nice walk through the forest/jungle and we got to see a few coffee plants that had seeds on them. It’s not coffee season right now, so I guess we were lucky to see any at all.

We went back to Pedro’s house where his wife had prepared an excellent lunch for us. We had a vegetable soup, fried plantains, and chopped tomatoes. It was all grown fresh on their property and it all tasted unbelievable! After lunch we walked up to his “processing center” for the coffee where we got to see how they skin the seeds to get to the beans, and then how they roast the beans to make them actually look, smell and taste like coffee. We were given the chance to bag our own beans that we helped to peel and roast, but since I’m not a coffee drinker, it didn’t really appeal to me. Plus, to send some home would have made it an incredibly expensive cup of coffee, just not worth it.

We got a ride back to the hostel with Pedro in his truck, because we were all too lazy to walk the hour and a half to get back from his farm. The tour cost 40,000 pesos (£14) including the lunch and the ride back to the hostel, so that seemed reasonable to me. It wasn’t exactly the coffee plantation I thought we were going to see, but it was still nice.

I walked into town with Vahe and we went up to the Mirador Valle de Cocora, which is a viewpoint over the city of Salento. Based on the name, I had assumed it was going to be a viewpoint to the Valle de Cocora. I was mistaken. There were some massive trees blocking the view to the valley, but we still got to see a nice view of Salento, so it was worth the hike up the stairs. We picked up a few beers and headed back to La Serrana for dinner. It was an excellent feast of carrot soup, followed by Jamaican jerk chicken and coconut rice, with a mango and cucumber salad on the side. Everything was delicious!

I haven’t felt very good since dinner though, so I don’t know if it’s something I ate or what, but I think tonight is going to be an earlier night than I expected. Hopefully some rest will do me good.