Day 126 - Caffeine fix

Salento

The main thing we wanted to do in Salento was to visit a coffee farm, so we caught a willy to the Ocaso coffee plantation. We were lucky enough that no other visitors were there, so we effectively had a private tour.

The tour was hands-on, really interesting and informative and our guide Camilla was particularly good. We learnt that there is a limited range of altitudes where coffee can grow, and of course Colombia has plenty of those areas. We followed the lifecycle of the coffee plant, where we were able to pick some beans, plant seeds, and then transplant seedlings, We then had a small bean picking competition (which K won), then learnt about processing, finishing up with roasting, grinding and of course drinking! We also learnt that it's difficult to get good coffee in Colombia, as the Colombians export the best beans and generally just the second class beans (bad shape, too small, discoloured) are used at home, so traditionally Colombians aren't into good coffee....as it's the expensive stuff for export!

That afternoon we caught a jeep to Salento's other major tourist attraction, the Cocora Valley, which has the last major population of wax palms, the tallest palms in the world. We had been told that this was the main reason people come to Salento, but we were a little surprised by this, maybe that's because coffee doesn't seem to be that interesting to Colombians!

It was Sunday, so when we arrived in the valley there were hundreds of tourists, nearly all Colombians. Many of the them were riding horses (with no helmets on and no control of the horses), at one point we were pushed aside from the path by horses who were focused on just getting to the end of the ride, nothing was going to stop them! We walked along the path for a while with palm trees standing tall amongst some quite beautiful scenery, before jumping into another willy back to town.