Coffee Land

Last weekend Molly and I went to la Zona Cafetera-the Coffee area of Colombia, about 7 hours south of Medellin. We didn't leave until the afternoon because I had to teach English in the morning and we also had gone out the night before so we were feeling a bit sluggish. By the time we got to Armenia, there were no more buses running to Salento, the pueblito we had to go to. So we spent $10 each instead of the $1.50 bus fare to get there at around 9:30 p.m. We thought it was good that we had called the Plantation House (the hostel we stayed at) ahead of time to advise them, but when we arrived and saw that there were only 2 other people staying in the dorms. We were so tired we immediately went to bed.

if I didn't get enough of it with the weekly trips to the coffee farm in Costa Rica, here's even more!

bamboo forest on hostel owner's land

The next day we got up early, as you do when in a small farm town with roosters crowing at dawn and the sun coming up through the window right next to your bed. We got up and explored the town, which was bustling on a Sunday, very different from Medellin which is dead on Sundays. It seems all the city folk go to towns like Salento. All of the shops were open, food stalls had been set up in the square, (reminded me SLIGHTLY of Marrakech, Morocco, definetly on a smaller scale) and people were everywhere trying to get us to buy peanuts, colored popcorn, and jewelry. We got some fresh squeezed juice in the morning and Molly found a cute cafe with a 100+ year old coffee/espresso machine to get her c!offee fill. Later, we had a yummy lunch of soup, trout with lentils, rice, plaintains, fried cornbread, salad, and guava juice-all for less than $3! Later Molly and I strolled around some more, bought amazing figs stuffed with arequipe (Colombians version of caramel/dulce de leche). So rich and good we each ate 3 in that first date and were on a bit of a sugar high.

don't pineapples grow so strangely

We also went on a tour of the hostel owner's farm. He had just bought a ton of land that had coffee trees, pineapple bushes, bamboo forest, avocado trees, mandarin trees, mint, strawberries, waterfalls, and great views on it. He showed us how he is going to start something no one is doing-sharecropping his coffee plants. He will allow people from outside the country to buy 10-20 plants and those will be their plants. He will pick the berries and do whatever the people want done with their specific 10 trees, whether it be go through the entire process of roasting the coffee and grinding it, or just processing it to it's yellow peanut-like state and then shipping it their way. It's kind of a novel idea, and he seemed very excited about it. While he showed us around he kept yelling out glees of surprise as he discovered a new path or a new addition that was put on the coffee house.

chocolate with cheese!

the lookout point

The next day we did the hike through el Valle del Corcora (the Valley of the Wax Palms). To get to the valley we were told to arrive early to the town square to hop in a jeep for the 45 min/1 hour ride. We had been warned that they tend to stuff people into these Jeep Wrangler sized jeeps but we didn't see how it could be possible to have more than eight. Well we soon found out. Picture a jeep wrangler with the back seats taken out and two benches fitting two people each facing eachother put in on the sides. When we got there, the back was already full, so Molly and I had to squeeze in, with me eventually standing halfway through the ride, and with other people squeezed into the open back area with us, three people on top, and three people in front, for a total of 14 people! Needless to say, Molly and I were ready to start walking when we arrived. The two hour hike to a finca with hummingbirds and hot chocolate with cheese was a muddy and consisted of many river crossings on two branches laid across the river, but we managed. It was Molly's first experience of the traditional chocolate con queso, and she was pleasantly surprised. Then we set off for the hour hike to the 2850 meter lookout point. We were already pretty high up, but the last 20-30 minutes of the hike to the lookout were steep and full of muddy horse tracks and poop. The forest we hiked through was different from any other part of Colombia we had seen, reminding us of forests back home. On the way down we saw the wax palms, 60 meter (about 180 ft) tall trees that dotted the hillside. Just a spectacular sight that I don't think my camera truly did justice to. Just having a view of the mountains, tree, peaks, forests was so impressive, it looked so untouched.

Molly surrounded my palm trees

Molly and I from the lookout point