Colombia’s famous coffee region

We finally visit the much hyped coffee region of south Colombia. The coffee region is made up of a handful of different towns and cities, but, based on recommendations from other travellers (and of course ever-reliable internet blogs), we chose Jardin, Manizales, Salento and Filandia. A nice mix of city – high tourism vs small and quiet towns.

Jardin
Day one includes a walk to the famous Jardin waterfall (where I had my longest ever beard picture – still fairly unmasculine, I know – but long for me). An exciting ride on a caterpillar vehicle (obvio made for children) and lots of unhealthy street food. The highlight for me – watching an incredibly competitive 5-aside football game and seeing a on-demand video games store.
Sofia’s highlight? Seeing (and taking far too many pictures of) colourful doors. No judgement…

 

Manizales
Manizales is the only city on our plans – and we only go here to get to Salento and Filandia. Filandia is a place that one maybe one or two people have recommended to me months previous and for some reason it’s always stuck in my head since. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of Filandia Vodka.

Anyhow. Manizales. We take some cable cars, eat A LOT of street-BBQ’d corn – amazing stuff! I watch some football, lose money on street gambling games, we get inspired by watching people paraglide, we have our first Spanish cinema experience and visit a Salsa street festival. At the festival’s peak, it starts hammering it down with rain, so we retreat to a nearby billiards bar. Here we get pestered by locals who keep drowning us (me) with some local spirit and another who keeps begging us to come to her house. We eventually decide against it as by this point I’m apparently pretty drunk…

I finally discover Bogota Beer Company – tasty craft beer ON TAP and at a reasonable price, how I only realised how good this is at the very bottom of Colombia is a mystery. We also visit what can only be known as the worst Irish bar ever established – the only Irish thing about it was the word “Irish” in it’s name and perhaps some strange green dirty pint they sold…

Sofia goes on a day-trip to see some mountain peak/glacier. I considered joining until I hear we have to wake before 4am and will face extremely cold temperatures and headaches due to the high altitude – maybe another time. Instead I hang out drinking much coffee, explore the city and watch Liverpool inflict Manchester City’s only defeat of the premier league season so far, 4-3 🙂

 

Salento
Salento is the best known tourist attraction in Colombia’s coffee region. Though, we’re told by a local that officially it isn’t even part of the coffee region. But, there are many coffee farms here and quite possibly some of the tallest palm trees in the world. You have to see the pictures to get a real perspective of how tall.

First though, we explore the tiny town and excitedly find more beer on tap and great street food! And, perhaps more interestingly, I spot a motorbike rental shop…
I can see why Salento is so popular among tourists, and the town is literally full of us, annoyingly…
It has a typically Colombian plaza surrounded by little gems of cafe’s, restaurants, bars;  a pretty special mirador and is surrounded by beautiful jungle-like nature. In fact, we stay in an ecolodge way out in said nature, the only way to get there is a 20 minute walk through a narrow jungle path. Check out the hostel.
When we’re walking on the path to check-in for the first time, in the pitch-black we see beautiful sparkling orange fire-flies everywhere – amazing. Try viewing this video in the dark:

 

The food here is AMAZEBALLS. Fried plantain covered in grated cheese? Yes please. Locally caught trout covered in garlic sauce with fried plantain on the side? HELL YEAH. We also find a superb British/American restaurant that did the biggest pancakes you’ve seen. And they had the best music perhaps of any restaurant, bar or nightclub I’ve ever been. If you’re into house music check out this bomb of a playlist.

Both of us have wanted to do a coffee tour in Colombia for some months, so we decide Salento will be the place to have the pleasure of hosting us. With some difficulty and incentive, I convince Sofia we should upgrade to the premium tour which includes a tasting lab. Knowing I would forget 95% of the info within 24 hours, during the tour I wrote notes on the “bean to cup” process, the different types of coffee beans and how much they are worth, info on the tasting lab etc. here if you’re interested.
Forgive the style of writing. Like most men, multi-tasking is not a particularly strong skill of mine. Unless it’s drinking a pint whilst watching football – this I am a pro at.

What happens on the last day in Salento? I break my own record of falling off motorbikes. This time – twice. The second time, the bike wouldn’t start for about 10 minutes and fair to say I was a little worried my wallet was about to get a hammering. Eventually it starts and I leave the wet, muddy dirt tracks of Salento and find some nice tarmac motorway to open the throttle a little (a lot). Similar to Guatape, there were some stunning open roads to ride, surrounded by nothing but nature. Here’s the route I was advised to take.

Perhaps the most dramatic part of the day was when my throttle cable snapped whilst in the remote town of Pijao. At 16:30 it was starting to get dark and I was worried the mechanics here would be closing soon, if there were any. This would be a disaster, as, I was miles from Salento and without a great deal of cash – where would I sleep??? After some frustrating Spanish conversations with locals, I’m directed to a local mechanic who stops what he’s doing, sends a colleague to a nearby shop to buy a new cable, and replaces it, all within around 45 mins at a price of 5,000 pesos (£1.25). I tip him. I know for a fact this would take a week longer than the one week quoted and cost around £1,000 in England (slightly exaggerated). Anyhow – the automotive industry could learn a lot from Colombia.

That evening I return and make my presence known by cooking up my speciality lentil curry. Nobody dies = win.

On our last day in Salento, we decide to do something rather spectacular. For whatever reason, since coming out here I have developed what can only be described as a progressively growing desire for adrenaline. The result this time? Paragliding. Sofia somewhat overcomes her fear of heights and decides to join in, surprisingly with little persuasion from me.

Here’s a pretty cool video from a drone which followed us in-flight:

Filandia
The evening after paragliding we head to the town I’m most looking forward to visiting. Naturally, on arrival we eat a ton of street food and go for cocktails. Filandia is similar to Salento; vibrant, colourful and full of great places to eat and drink. Though it had a few differences, it was smaller and more quaint. And, the rumours were true, it really is lesser known, there are hardly any tourists here. It’s more of a town for local Colombian’s to enjoy rather than typical backpackers. Finding a gem leaves a sweet taste in my mouth.

The next day we hire bikes and head to a nearby town through some local country roads. From the looks we got from locals there, it was clear they don’t see many. We tried to support them by buying beers and snacks from their stores, not that we were craving them or anything.
After 10 miles of bike riding there, we don’t fancy biking back and find a “collectivo” to drive us to Filandia. In typical Colombia fashion, as many people as possible are crammed, stood on the open back of the truck, along with our bikes. Slightly concerning that one man’s bag was leaking blood onto the roof of the truck…

That evening, we sat outside a bar and watched the sunset from the mirador whilst having various deep conversations about life.

Pereira
We head to Pereira as it’s another major city where you can pivot to travel to other cities. We found a Bogota Beer Company and spent the night drinking draught beer for a change. We also bumped into a friend, Ryan, who we met at the Spanish school in Envigado, small world.

The dreaded goodbye happened here. Sofia was due to travel back home, and I was heading southwards, so Pereira hosted our final goodbye (cue violin). For sure this was the hardest goodbye yet, but we reassured each other we would have more adventures at some point in the future. I have a lot to thank her for – she certainly improved the quality of my blog posts as there are now actual photos of me in the last few posts…

After she’d left, I kept myself busy by negotiating a better phone contract with O2 and planning the next adventure – two weeks in Quito with my younger brother, Alex. Boy I was looking forward to this.