Quick trip to Colombia’s coffee region
Super worthwhile spontaneous 2 days in Eje Cafetero
If you Google “the most beautiful town in Colombia”, chances are Salento will be high up on your search result. It’s one of the most famous towns in Colombia’s coffee region, or Eje Cafetero. Even before arriving in Colombia, I was recommended to take some time to visit this region. I managed to include it close to the end of my trip, and it was one of the best decisions I made for Colombia.
Where is it?
“Eje Cafetero” consists of a number of cities and towns in the middle of Colombia. It is approximately 1-hour flight / 8-hour bus away from Medellin, Bogota, or Cali. One can fly in through Armenia (AXM), Pereira (PEI), or Manizales (MZL), and proceed to take the bus to the bus terminal, from where you can go to any cities or towns in the region. I flew into Armenia and stayed in Salento, and I thought I made a really good decision due to Salento’s close proximity to the coffee farms and the Cocora Valley.
I went near the end of January, and the weather was pretty much perfect — between 17 to 25 degrees every day with no rain. I landed early afternoon, took a bus to Armenia bus station, and then another one to Salento, arriving at my accommodation at around 4 pm. I spent the remaining hours of the day exploring Salento town, which is incredibly beautiful in itself, but more so because it’s situated in the middle of the mountains among the magical mists of the area. The town is not huge. The most important areas can probably included in a 5x5 square.
As small as the town is, due to its highly touristic nature, everything you need functions super well. There are local shops and small supermarkets for daily goods, lots of restaurants, and a few nice local bars that open until 1 am with pool tables or karaoke. The transport is centralized in the town’s main plaza. There is a jeep station booth in the middle of the town square, where you buy the tickets to everywhere you need to go, including the other towns (notably Filandia), Valle de Cocora, and the coffee fincas. The prices and schedules are all fixed, so it’s impossible to get scammed.
As I wandered between the streets, I ran into a local ice cream place that serves “helado de paila”, roughly translated to “dancing ice cream”. The young man selling the ice cream explained to me that they put this ice cream in a pot while constantly turning it as if doing a dance. That’s how it gets the creamy and sticky texture. He convinced me to get their ‘secret flavor’ which after further inquiry turned out was pumpkin. It was not bad.
The Cocora Valley hike
If there is anything this region is internationally famous for, is how the Cocora Valley is the inspiration for Disney’s Colombian-themed animation, Encanto. It’s a 4-hour roundabout hike surrounded by the tallest of palm trees in the endless valleys. As I only had one full day, I needed to do the hike in the morning and come back in time for my 2 pm coffee tour, which is an absolute must for the region. I’m not much of a hiker, so I decided to wake up early for the first Jeep that leaves town at 6:30, to begin the hike at around 7 am. The hike path is a circular loop, so as the first 2 jeeps arrived, we more or less split into two groups and started the journey.
I took the anti-clockwise path, which is relatively the easier way because at the mid-point there is a steep hill. If you go anticlockwise, you walk down instead of climbing up. 7 am in the Cocora Valley was a refreshing 20 degrees, and I fast-walked just about enough so my body heats itself up to not feel cold nor hot.
I sped walked the entire way, and was quickly the first person to take the anticlockwise path, with no other human being in sight. The valley felt magical. The greens of the valley, the morning mists, and the tall palm trees. It felt as if it was just me, myself, and nature. The first part of the hike is essentially a long uphill, nothing challenging yet extremely scenic. Within 20 minutes, I was arrived at the viewing point, overlooking the entire valley.
Within another 20 minutes or so, the pathway brought me to the second part of the pathway inside the ‘forest’, surrounded by very tall trees.
Within an hour, I arrived at the midpoint of the hike. Although I wasn’t aware that it was the midpoint, and thought the road was closed, so I took a detour back to the wrong way for another half an hour. This was also the first time I twisted my ankle (I continued to twist it 3 more times before I got back to the town).
The second half of the hike became wetter, now having to walk through stones and some muddy parts, surrounded by shallow rivers and waterbody. It took me longer because I had to be extremely careful about my twisted ankle, but the view and experience were also unique. Although after the mid-point, I started encountering people who hiked from the other way and were no longer alone.
Before long, the hike was reaching its end. I walked passed the wet, rivery areas, and once again was embraced by an extensive valley’s greenness. With my ankle in pain, I was extremely eager for the exit. But wow, it’s just so beautiful here.
After walking from 7 am to 10 am, I finished the hike and was once again on the street where the jeep dropped me off. I had purchased a round trip at the town center, so I found a jeep to take me back. I was the only person looking to head back into Salento at that time, so the driver took me on without waiting for anybody else, and I got to enjoy a private transfer back, wrapping up the most wonderful hiking experience to date.
Coffee tour at the finca
Since I had already gone to the coffee region of Colombia, the one thing I had to do was a coffee tour. There are plenty of coffee farms that offer similar tours, so after some research, I went for one of the most famous fincas, a 3-hour premium coffee tour at El Ocaso.
In getting there, I was thoroughly impressed by the logistics. All of the coffee farms are located outside of town, and most of them are about 20 minutes away, 5–10 minutes from one another. One must buy the ticket from the town center’s jeep station, telling them the name of the coffee farm you have a tour with. At around 1:30 pm, around 10 jeeps came around consecutively, and some people started calling out the names of the coffee farms. The people would then get into the corresponding jeeps to get to their tours.
Just before 2 pm, we got to the coffee farm, which looked absolutely adorable. It looked like a little countryside classroom with an impeccable view of the mountains. According to the tour we bought, my group was then quickly led into a coffee lab to put down our stuff and begin the tour.
Our lovely guide began to explain to us the process of coffee production, from how to pick the right beans, to processing, and drying the beans, and then finally spent a lot of time explaining the different types of beans. In the end, inevitably we were led to conduct rounds and rounds of smelling and taste tests, which I was extremely terrible with.
At the time of writing, I have honestly already forgotten most of the knowledge from the coffee tour. However, we did have a great time, and I made friends with a few people on the tour, with whom I ended up going out for the evening.
Tejo and everything that follows
On the jeep from the coffee farm back to Salento, I made plans to try out the traditional “Tejo” game with a few people. It’s a throwing game where you throw rocks at a hill with gunpowder, so if you hit the target it makes a large exploding sound along with the gunpowder smell. (Really reminded me of the range-shooting practices in the military.)
After dinner, we went to the only Tejo place in town, and started playing while drinking beers. After a while we realized that none of us was particularly good at the game, so we stopped following the official point counting and began making everything an excuse to drink. That’s when we really bonded and decided to continue elsewhere to continue the night.
After about 2 hours at the Tejo place, we decided to stick with what we knew, so we ended up playing pool near the town center. The person in charge of the ordering decided that we should all drink shots because they had a discount for a bottle. It was called Amarillo, a liquor that tastes similar to the star anis flavored drink Aguardiente, but a little smoother-tasting. By this point, I was really feeling the alcohol, but the ambiance was great so I chose to keep up with the good company.
Sometime between 12:30 — 1 am, the bar was closing so we had to leave. We walked to the main town square in search of the next opening place. Unsurprisingly for a small town like Salento, nothing was open anymore. As we wandered around, we were invited by some locals to join them for shots. Although skeptical, there were four of us so we felt safe enough to drink with them. We ended up drinking and hanging out with a group of locals until 2:30 in the morning before finally parting to take a rest, wrapping up an unexpectedly eventful evening at a small coffee town, Colombia.
