May 29th, 2011
In Colombia for 1 week tonight - still no sign of guerillas, kidnappings, or many other Americans for that matter. So far, that has been one of the most interesting things I have experienced here. You hear the complete opposite about Colombia from people in the US and people who have actually been here. The lingering bad reputation of the country, from what I have experienced first-hand, is undeserved.
I don't think I have written since Bogota, which puts me way far behind. After taking a night but from Bogota and to Armenia and Salento, we found our way to La Serrana, a working farm that doubles as a eco-hotel. It was a really nice place to spend a few days. It is right in the middle of Colombia's coffee growing district that has really green, beautiful rolling hillsides dotten with tall wax-palm trees (the tallest palm trees in the world at about 60 feet). Their existence in the middle of all the other lower trees creates a pretty cool effect to see their palm tops jutting out at the top. There is not a ton to do at the hostel itself, but there were some good trekking opportunities not far away.
We arrived early in the morning, around 7:30am, after a night of travel and I was pretty exhausted even though I had slept well on the bus. We took a nap for a few hours and then got up to eat breakfast that the hostel included even though we did not actually stay there the night before. After that, we headed out to walk to a coffee farm, where we took about a 45 minutes tour. I have been on tours before, but this was one of the best because I got to see the actual machinery and plants up close...heck the tour guide even put us to work and we picked a few coffee berries outselves. He also told us that, during the high season, 20 people harvest the beans from all 50,000 plants on the farm! Yes, 50,000 plants! After picking about 10 of the pods and dropping half of them, I realized that you have to have well trained fingers to be able to do the job well. In the high season, a worker may pick up to 200kg (a lot, lot of pounds) in a day. Pretty incredible! At the end of the tour, we got a chance to see the unroasted coffee beans before they are sent to market. It is interesting that the best quality beans are exported to other countries, while the "second-hand" beans that are not as good of quality stay in Colombia. This year, there has been a ton of rain that has affected the coffee crop, which is one of the major reasons why coffee prices have been spiking. Finally, we got to try coffee directly from the farm. It was a great cup, so I decided to grab a bag to sip on for lazy Sunday mornings when I start the job. For dinner, we headed to the supermarket and got some greens to make a salad - much needed for me since I had not had greens for a long, long time. It turned out to be delcious, a well needed fix!
The next day, we headed out to hike the Valley de Cocora with one of the other girls that we met in the hostel, Jen. She is a brit who has been traveling for about 9 months now and is heading up to Central America after Colombia. She was worried about keeping up with Glenn and I on the hike, but I assured here that she would make it just fine! The hike was through awesome cloudforest dotted with the wax-palms I described earlier. It rained a little bit, but thankfully never poured on us. We did have to cross a fast flowing creek on bridges made of three logs about 6 or 7 times at the beginning of the path, but it made the going exciting. After about 2 and a half hours, we reached a nature reserve at the end of the trail and had a grossly sweetened cup of coffee, but the place redeemed itself because of all of the hummingbirds flying around where we were sitting having the coffee. We then headed to the mountain lookout point, another hour or so of going UP a pretty steep and muddy path. The views from the top were well worth it. After another 2 hours of hiking, we made it back to where we were dropped off initially and headed back into town.
Dinner that night was one of the best on the trip! I splurged and decided to eat the food on offer at the hostel - a burger. I figured it would be good since the guy who runs the hotel is a chef from New York. Even thought the burger was a little bit more rare than I usually eat, it was awesome. The toppings really did the trick. Guacamole, hummus, lettuce, eggs, grilled pineapple. Well worth the $7 it cost for it. I needed a little bit of protein after the 6 hours of hiking that we did that day.
The next morning, we got up and I readied myself for a long day and night of travel. To get to where we were going next, we had to backtrack to Bogota and then take another night bus to San Gil. We took the day bus, which turned out to be a really beautiful ride through mountains and cloudforest. The Colombians are building a huge, and I mean huge, tunnel that cuts through the mountains. It is supposed to cut the current travel time down from 7.5 hours to 5. After spending some more time in the Bogota bus terminal, we finally boarded our bus and made it to San Gil at 4:30 in the morning. Not the optimal, but we were able to wake the guy up at the hostel we were going to stay at so that we could check in and sleep for a few hours. That was this morning I guess. Sometimes the days run together when you really don't have to know what date or even day it is. Thankfully, I have a watch that keeps me on track with the date, day and time!
Today, after sleeping for a few hours when we got in, we headed out to try and find some horseback riding tours. As walking through town, you could definitely tell that the altitude had changed A LOT! It is a lot hotter here and I finally felt pretty comfortable walking around in shorts and flip flops. There are also mosquitos here as I am finding out through the multiple bites on my legs. Time to break out the 100% deet! No luck finding a horseback tour though, weirdly enough. It seemed like, even though it was a Sunday, a lot of the town's stores were closed down. We ended up heading to a local swimming hole called Pozo Azul, about a 30 minute walk outside of town. The water was pretty cold so I didn't wind up swimming, but we did lay by the rushing wart of the river in the sun for a little while and got in a much needed nap. Tonight was a catch up night with emailing and blogging, as the eco-hotel's wifi was not working. We got pretty much the rest of the trip planned. Tomorrow we are going to go caving and then to a really nice colonial town. Should be nice, more to come soon!
"The heat is on...the heat is o-on!"
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