Salento and the Valle de Cocora

The next morning I left for Salento. It’s a very small little town in the mountains a few hours from Manizales. I’ve heard how beautiful it was from lots of travelers and Colombian, so I was expecting it to be quite touristy. I was pleasantly surprised when I got there. It was a bit touristy, but it was mostly Colombian tourists walking around town, not too many gringos.
The hostel where I was staying, The Plantation House, felt a bit like being in summer camp. The views were amazing, It was on a hill on the edge of town, looking out on to a huge valley filled with coffee farms, palm trees and pastures. The actual grounds were beautiful as well, filled with tropical plants and flowers. The actual building wasn’t anything special, more like a cabin, a bit dirty and run down but, again, felt like being back in camp but it felt going being out in the country.

A few guys from the hostel were going to hike the Valle de Cocora in the morning so I decided to join them. I hadn’t read much about the area we were heading to, except that there were lots of wax palms, the official tree of Colombia. It didn’t sound incredible exciting, I had seen lots of palm trees down here, but I stoked for a long day of hiking.

In the morning we walked into to town to get a jeep out to Cocora, a small village about 20 minutes from Salento. These old army jeeps are the rural bus service out here. They wait until they get 8 people before leaving. The five of us are crammed inside, trying to figure out where the other three are going to sit. One guy climbs on the roof, the other two stand on the bumper, hang on and we’re off.

We start hiking and the valley is breathtaking. The trees are unreal. Up to 150 feet tall! Pretty surreal looking, too, as their trunks are thin, with nothing on them except the palms at the top. We hike for a few hours up to a farm house where they serve you coffee or soda. It was a nice place to relax for a bit and watch all the hum birds. Another hour or two, we get to another farm house. The view from here were gorgeous….overlooking the valley and surrounded by mountains. The couple that owned the house was really nice and fun to talk to. Another hour on the trail and we came to the most breathtaking part of the hike. A lush, green valley, surrounded by beautiful farms and filled with thousands of the wax palms. Unreal. Another short hike and we were back in the village, about 6 hours in all. We try to find a jeep and none of them seem to want to take us back to Salento. Most can’t be bothered as they are in the midst of seemingly, very important chess match.

We finally find a jeep, and about 10 minutes into the ride, the driver starts looking out the window at the jeep. He has a bit of a concerned look on his face, then he curses in Spanish, “Wey puta”, and pulls over. Flat tire. He then tells us that was his spare as he got a flat yesterday as well. At this point we are exhausted, starving and just want to get back to town. The next jeeps aren’t coming for almost an hour. We give the guy a few pesos and decided to walk. It’s not far, just up and over one big hill. The views from the top were once again breathtaking and it was worth to hear the annoying Israeli guy whine about having to walk again.

Later, I head into town to get some dinner. Although the town is a little touristy, it’s definitely still a country town. There is a traditional town square, an old church, a few restaurants and food vendors around the plaza. There’s also a little main street filled with cafes, artist’s shops and a few pool halls. The rest of the town consists of feed stores, little markets, butchers and a few veterinarians. The men in town, old and young, are wearing ponchos, tall rubber boots and sombreros and there was usually more horses then cars in sight. The town was one of the most laid back towns I’ve been to here in Colombia, but I saw something I have yet to see. The police station here was caged in looking like they were ready for a riot at any moment, and there were lots of cops walking around with large weapons. The town seemed safer then anywhere else I have been down here, but I think this rural mountainous region was once home to significant ocaine production.

The owner of the hostel also owns a coffee plantation, so the next day I take a tour of the farm. It was interesting to see the process from the guys handpicking the beans, shelling them, drying them and finally roasting. The coffee plants were on incredibly steep hills, also on the farm were bamboo forests, pineapple plants and plantain trees.

My friend Jon, who owns the hotel in Taganga where I worked, was in Armenia with his girlfriend for the weekend. Melissa recently moved home to help her mom run their family business because her dad recently passed away. IT was great seeing them. We hung out in Salento, had some lunch and the went into Armenia, about 30 minutes away. It was about the size of Periera and had also been devastated by earthquakes. It was quite modern. They showed me around town and we watched a parade, mostly the local girls dressed up in cowgirl gear riding their horses through town. We went out to a club that night that had a live mariachi-ish band playing. Everyone was singling along with the band, dancing and laughing. Pretty entertaining scene.

The next day we relaxed at Melissa’s house. It was a beautiful house by any standards. Filled with original Picasso and Botero paintings., pool in the back yard, amazing gardens. A pack of German Sheppard guard dogs and a guy with a very large shotgun stood guard. I felt like I was in one of Pablo’s estates. Back to Salento for a few more days of relaxing then back to Cali to get to work on my bike. Hopefully.

Manizales and Parque Los Nevados

After close to a week in Pereira, I was ready to get moving again. Next up, Manizales. This is a small university town in the center of the coffee region. It is basically the Boulder of Colombia. It, like Pereira, doesn’t have much colonial architecture and is also quite modern. The town sits in the mountains and is full of steep hills and winding streets. It also has a very hip vibe to the town, much more of a European feel, the cafe culture here is strong. The town was also incredibly clean and the people here appeared to have more money that most places I have been in Colombia.

I didn’t spend much time in town as I came here to do some mountaineering in the nearby Parque Los Nevados. The national park has some of the biggest mountains in Colombia, the highest is Nevado del Ruiz, 5300 meters (15,900 feet) I booked a tour at the hostel and was leaving early in the morning.








The van picks me up, along with a few other German travelers staying at the hostel. My first clue that this wasn’t going to be the mountaineering trip that I hoped was the 50 something year old women, with a cane, already in the van. At first, I though maybe she was a local that was simply getting a ride up the mountain, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case.

We spent about 2 hours in the van, picking up another couple and driving into the hills. We get to the park, stop to take some pictures, back in the van for another ½ hour. We stop again for breakfast at a remote mountain hut. Typical Colombian breakfast of eggs and arepas, but they also served us all cocoa tea. This isn’t hot cocoa, it’s made from the leaves of the cocoa plant. The indigenous people have been eating and drinking it for years, it is supposed to fend of hunger, help with the altitude and give people energy for working in the high mountains. Basically, it was like drinking strong green tea, but it was nice to have something warm as it was getting pretty cold at this point.



Back in the van, a few more photo stops, the scenery was amazing. It would quickly change from lush, tropical rainforests, to high dessert scrub brush, to moon like landscapes, void of any vegetation, and finally to high altitude, snow covered peaks. We finally get to the point where we start hiking, we’re at about 4800 meters and the we’re going to about 5250 meters, not exactly the all day trek I was hoping for. The trail was steep, however, and at this elevation the air was thin and breathing was difficult. About an hour or so to the top and into huge snow fields. It was fun seeing snow in Colombia, especially knowing it was brutally hot in Cali just a few hours away.





On the way down we stopped for lunch at a hotel in the middle of the park. Nothing around but mountains and cows in sight. Typical Colombian almuerzo and then a soak in the hot springs. The view was amazing, even if the facilities were less then beautiful. Actually, the hotel would be a perfect setting for a horror movie or Stephen King novel. It was remote, cold, dark and run down. Regardless, the hot water felt good after a day of hiking.