Colombia: Salento

We ate breakfast at the hotel and then took an uber back to the airport. We woke up early and headed to the airport. We took the 7:45 am flight from Bogota to Pereira. 

Our hostel arranged for Juan Carlos to pick us up at the airport and he drove us the hour to Salento. 

We checked in to the beautiful ecohostel La Serrana. We had a private room with two sets of bunk beds and our own bathroom. The hostel was a 2 km trek from the main town of Salento. The path was frequently very muddy and there were cows on the other side of the fence. Breakfast was over but the kitchen gave us all mugs of coffee which we drank while we relaxed for a bit outside. 

We changed, grabbed beers, and walked the 2 km from our hostel to the Salento city center. Salento is a very small town with a population less than 8000. It is a huge tourist destination due to its cuteness and location in coffee country and proximity to Valle de Cocora. It seemed like every other building we passed in the town was a hostel. Salento was the 'chilliest' city we went to at its elevation of over 6000 feet, but it was still pleasant and sunny the whole time we were there.

There was a cute market in the city square.

We had a chicken and rice lunch at the edge of the square. 

We walked around exploring Salento.

Diego almost threw Reid's jacket onto a power line. 

We walked through the city to a set of large stairs and climbed to the top.

There was a park at the top!

We kept hiking down the other side of the hill.

We were almost back to the top of the hill when two guys stopped us. He and Diego had a long back and forth in Spanish. "They're looking for a bird. He's a wildlife photographer," Diego translated. I shrugged. I know nothing about birds. "Que idomas hablan?" the guy asked Diego gesturing to us. "Inglés," Diego replied. "Él habla alemán," the guy said, pointing to his friend. "Ich spreche Deutsch!" 

I raised my hand. He turned out to be from Switzerland. He told me in German how he missed the Christmas markets

but found the weather in Colombia to be much better. 

On our walk back to the hostel we passed a bar with a Tejo court in the back. For 20.000 ($7) we got four beers and a handful of gunpowder packets for Tejo. The bartender explained the game to us and then let us be. You place a ring of gun powder packets on a slab of clay and then you chuck underhand a heavy stone. Whoever gets closest to the ring gets a point and if you hit the gun powder packets and they explode you get extra points. Diego and Joe both hit the gun powder packets and they made satisfying pops. Reid was comically bad at Tejo and frequently missed the clay altogether, once even hitting the wall behind the clay and breaking off a substantial piece of the wood wall.

We walked back to the hostel. They had a garden area. We laid down on the hill and took a nap in the prickly grass. We then watched the sun set. 

We trekked back to the town to grab dinner. We ate dinner at the sister hostel to ours at the edge of town. We ate dinner on the back porch overlooking the town and a valley. We then hiked back up the stairs in Salento to get a view of the town at night. We swung in some screechy metal swings overlooking the Christmas lights in Salento. When we got bored of that view, we turned around and admired the dark blue silhouettes of the giant Central Andes mountain range and the clouds illuminated by the almost full moon.

We then found a divey pool hall, grabbed some more cheap beers, and played a few rounds of pool. The bathroom in the pool hall was a three sided cement cube with a hole in the ground and a green tarp curtain. You had to pay 30 cents to use it. There was a window next to our pool table which some other foreigners spent the evening leaning out of and smoking. For awhile I was the only girl in the pool hall. We then walked the muddy path back to our hostel and went to bed.

The hostel served a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomato and onion, toast, a banana, and coffee. We ate, got dressed, and We called a jeep from our hostel to pick us up and drive us to the valley, about 30 minutes from Salento. 

The group consensus is that the Valle de Cocora hike was the best thing we did on the trip. It was all of our favorite day, which is definitely saying something. It's hard to describe why I liked it so much, but basically the hike was amazing and the views were unlike anything I have ever seen.

We hopped out of the jeep and started hiking immediately.

We accidentally hiked the hike backwards, which I'm actually glad we did. The way we hiked it the wax palms were last. Had we hiked it the other way around it would have been very anti climactic. The rest of the hike was beautiful. But the palms were a great reward and we felt like we really earned it. The only downside was that we were really sweaty in all the photos. We were also worried the hike would be crowded, but luckily we saw very few people. As Reid put it succinctly when were we asked later in the trip why we wanted to go out of our way to get to a private beach, "We don't like other people."

The hike took us over five hours to complete. Reid likes to hike very hard and fast. Reid loves nature. Like I thoroughly enjoy the outdoors. But I've never met anyone who thrives outside as much as Reid. 

The hike had a huge variety of terrain and sights. It was all unbelievably green. Like green green. Bright green.

There were a bunch of rickety bridges throughout the hike. None were ever too high, they were just used to criss cross the river. But they swayed in a not fun way when we crossed. 

We got to a fork in the path about two hours in with a very not descriptive sign. With no cell service and no map we stood there for awhile trying to figure out where to go. Eventually some people passed and explained that one way went to the Reserva Natural Acaime and the other to Finca La Montana, toward the wax palms. We decided to add the 4 km roundtrip detour to Acaime to our hike. We hiked to a little building that had hummingbird feeders and hot chocolate. 

Reid examining a map to determine where we needed to go at the fork

Diego sampling the hummingbird food

We hiked back down to the fork and back up toward Finca La Montana. The climb up was very steep and we reached the top sweaty, hearts working overtime, and out of breath. It's a cloud forest, so it was chilly and damp at the top. Luckily, the sky remained clear for most of the day. 

We continued hiking. Eventually we caught our first glimpses of the tallest palm trees in the world. I know it seems dumb to say but the trees were fricken tall. It's such a cliche, but the pictures absolutely do not do it justice. It is a palm tree forest and the the thing that awed me the most was their height. I've never seen anything like it. Like it looks kind of absurd even. It's crazy. 

We took lots of breaks to sit on the hillsides and admire the views of the mountains and valleys and palms. I appreciated how much everyone really appreciated what we were seeing and doing.

On our way down a dirt road back to the start of the hike, we found a hole in the fence and decided to hike a little off piste. We hiked down a grassy shoulder and found a nice patch of grass to sit. This was my favorite part of the day. I'm so glad we found that little patch of grass. We were on an endorphin high from a five hour hike in a uniquely and stunningly beautiful and green valley. We took lots of photos and then just sat in silence taking it all in. We napped on this grassy mountainside underneath hundreds of palm canopies that were so high above us. 

Eventually we continued on down the hill and back on to the trail briefly before it ended where we started. We grabbed some snacks and then got on a jeep to go back to Salento. They wait until the jeeps are more than full before they leave. There were two people riding in the front seat. They squished four of us in the back seat and four people held on to the back the entire half an hour ride back to Salento.

All four of us are in this photo! You can see Diego and me in Joe's phone.

We grabbed beers, boxed wine, and water from a market in the town center. We walked back to our hostel playing "Would you rather".

The hostel served different themed dinners every night. That night they had an American theme. They served BBQ chicken, rice, potato salad, and avocado. We were starving and it was delicious.

We went and sat around the campfire at the hostel. We discussed our plans for the next day. Joe had brought the Lonely Planet book for Colombia which we passed around whenever we were sitting about and flipped through lazily to read up on different places before we lost it in Minca. Reid pored over the book in the hostel and narrowed our options down to three. 1. Hike in the Sierra Nevada mountains (difficult to get to) 2. Stay in Salento and explore more (we might run out of things to do) or 3. Go to Santa Rosa and explore the hot springs (which had mixed reviews). We kept changing our minds. We pulled out a deck of cards and played a few rounds of poker at the hostel. We then went to bed. 

Eventually the next morning after more deliberation we decided to go to Santa Rosa. While only 50 km away from Salento it was a real trek getting out there. We walked from our hostel to the town center of Salento. We took a shuttle bus from Salento to Pereira. The road was insanely windy and it was extremely hot in the bus. I almost threw up on Diego. We transferred buses and got on another bus from Pereira to Santa Rosa (after wandering aimlessly around the bus depot for awhile). Once we were in Santa Rosa the hot springs were another 30 minutes outside of the city. We street hailed a taxi. The taxi driver overheard us discussing how we were hungry so he said for 10000 extra pesos he'd take us to a restaurant on the way and wait for us. We think he got a cut for taking us there, but the food was cheap and good and we didn't mind.

Diego asked the taxi driver how much it would be to take us back to Salento. He called the company and told us it would be 160,000 COP or about 50 USD, which was about what we paid for all the buses and taxis to get to the hot springs. So we asked him to come pick us up from the hot springs at 4:30.

We finally got to the hot springs. It is a touristy resort kind of destination. The waterfall was beautiful and huge. The water is heated by volcanoes and can get up to 40 degrees Celsius. We climbed under the base of the waterfall and it felt a lot more like 40 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Our driver showed up and he drove us back to Salento. 

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Donde Laura based on Juan Carlos's recommendation. Diego told the waitress he recommended it to us and she was like, "Oh yeah, he comes here all the time." Very frequently people would recommend their friends' services or food to us. We bought a bottle of wine and each ordered a large flattened piece of meat which came with either fries or fried plantain as a side. 

"We need to find a pharmacy and get Kelly Dramamine," Diego insisted after dinner. By a lucky coincidence, there was a pharmacy next to the restaurant. Eternally grateful for Diego's Spanish skills, he explained what I needed drugs for and the pharmacist dug around for a box. Diego explained to me that they often sold drugs by the pill. The pharmacist opened the pack and asked how many I wanted. "Todos," I told him seriously. For the expensive price of 3 USD I purchased the whole 12 pack of Dramamine.