Salento, Colombia

After the craziness of Medellin we've had a big change with the country side of Colombia's coffee region. Somewhere that we hadn't heard about before coming to Colombia, Salento has actually been one of our favourite places so far. The scenery and surroundings are spectacular.

We've spent three action packed days here; the first day we visited a small coffee plantation where they had incredible coffee. The local owner told us about how all of the coffee farms in the region belong to one co-op and that although we got to try the good stuff, because they keep some for tourists, the rest of the good coffee would be exported with Colombian consumers having to make do with the second or third tier stuff. Then we walked around the surrounding towns while Alan and Duffy decided to cycle, and managed to take a few wrong turns resulting in a 2 hour cycle being 5 hours. The second day we did the walk 'Valle de Cocora', which had even better scenery and was a thoroughly enjoyable hike with one challenging 1 hour uphill climb that due to map complications we "decided" to do twice!

Salento is also the first place that we've found somewhere to play 'Tejo', Colombia's awesome national sport that someone had told us about in Minca! This is an incredible game where players have a small metal disc that they have to throw at a target 10 ft away this target consists of 2 metal rings sitting on a clay backboard with 4 triangular packets of gunpowder located on the north south east and west of the rings. Points are scored by sticking to the clay, hitting the gunpowder causing it to go on fire or hitting the gunpowder causing an explosion!. In a hard fought 3 set game where the standard dramatically increased as the game went on Conor and Lou narrowly defeated Alan and Duffy!

After a hectic few days, we've taken it easy today and will be be hopping on a night bus later to go further south to a town called San Augustin to chill out for a few days.