Salento
Salento is in the 'Zona Cafeteria' and is one of a number of regions that produces delicious Colombian coffee. We blew into Salento with plans to spend one night, two at most, and to take a tour of a coffee plantation before heading north to the coast. Well it only took my lending a camera cable to a fellow traveller for our plans to change. While uploading her photos, Katherine told us about her plans for the following day. She was being picked up at 6.30am for an overnight stay at the 'Eagle's Nest', a dairy farm an hour out of town owned by Salento-native Don Omar. Dairy farm? I found myself thinking, what happened to all the coffee bean talk? There wasn't too much arm twisting before we decided that we too would check out the Eagle's Nest.
So the following morning, sleepy eyed, we waited for the sound of Omar's jeep with Katherine and Julian, a Swiss guy who was also subjected to Katherine's convincing. Once arrived and happy to see two extra faces, Omar turned the jeep around to pick up some extra food in town before driving us for a bumpy hour up above the clouds to his little piece of paradise 3000m above sea level. With a handful of country friends back home, I've seen some pretty impressive properties but this one was nothing short of amazing. Overlooking endless luscious green valleys, clouds reshaping themselves below us, we were treated to a cup of coffee while sitting in the living room that had corner to corner windows, taking in the spectacular panoramic views of the Pereira and Armenia regions, which were even more impressive that night when twinkling under a thunderless lightening show.
The 24 hour itinerary was set, the feature attraction a visit to the wax palms that grow in one of the valleys. The wax palm is Colombia's 'national tree'. According to Omar, however, whoever mustered up this title didn't put much thought into it considering the palms are very rare, growing only in a few areas and in altitudes of between 2,500 and 2,800m. On top of this, Omar rightly pointed out that they're not even trees, they're palms! I was already awestruck by the property and didn't think a few palms could be nearly as impressive. How wrong I was.
After a hearty breakfast of eggs and arapas - kind of like unleavened bread patties made from corn, a favourite in Colombia - we headed back below the clouds for about an hour, stopping here and there to take photos or let cows pass on the road. We must have reached the right altitude level as, without warning from Omar, we turned a corner and the engine stopped at a small soccer field. There, we were suddenly hit with the phenomenon: not one, but hundreds of palms, sporadically scaling the valley in forest-like clumps. The most remarkable thing about them was their height, the tallest ones, according to Omar, reaching up to 80m. I've never seen anything like it and with no one around, only the sound of the palm fronds in the wind, it was nothing short of magical. My descriptions really don't do it justice but for me, it was almost reminiscent of Enid Blyton's 'The Magic Faraway Tree' - another world - except, of course, without the Angry Pixie, Dame Washalot and Saucepan Man etc. I never thought I could be so captivated by a bunch of trees, I mean, palms. We spent a good two hours marvelling, wandering under and around them, marvelling some more, and going crazy with the photo taking. I could have stayed there all afternoon, it was so peaceful and beautiful.
Colombia's highest soccer field
First glimpse
Omar standing next to a palm, these things are enormous!
A small 'forest' of palms
Other patches of palm forests
But Omar had other activities on the agenda. The rest of the afternoon was about exploring the farm. After lunch and a short siesta, we went for a walk around his property, hiking up hills in search of tree-dwelling sloths and discovering his strange breed of midget cow (the one I met was called 'Omar' and was about 1/3 of the size of a cow the same age!) One of Omar's farm hands, German, also introduced us to the game of Tejo, a traditional Colombian sport which I'll get into later, but we didn't play for long because a mesmerising sunset stole our attention. To top it all off, included in the Eagle's Nest experience was a cow-milking session early the next morning, we were on a dairy farm after all. What was less enticing was the expectation that we actually drink the milk straight from the cow! We weren't milking into a metal bucket but into a plastic cup, which was luckily filled with chocolate Nesquick. My good manners saw me drink the whole thing, a big smile on my face and lots of 'mmmmm's.
A sunset high above the clouds
Not sure I got the hang of this milking thing
Unpasturised milk, yuuuuuum!
The less impressive, but very beautiful, Cocora Valley
With plans to leave that evening on an overnight bus to Bogota and tired from two consecutive early mornings, a siesta was tempting once we'd returned from the Cocora Valley. The coffee region had surprised us, we'd got much more than the coffee we'd bargained for. Oh that's right, coffee! We'd completely neglected the whole reason for visiting the region. Conveniently, the hostel we were at also ran a coffee 'finca' (farm), so instead of a siesta we followed the hostel's owner around the farm and learnt a thing or two about coffee beans, their harvesting and the roasting process and of course had the obligatory coffee tasting at the end. Coffee region? Tick.
The view from the 'Don Eduardo' Finca
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