22/05/2019 – Coffee farm, Salento, Colombia

We opened the balcony doors of our room as soon as we woke up to a view of misty green mountains and a whole lot of fresh air. It only got up to 23°C today which was refreshingly cool, I wore trousers and Josh proper shoes for the first time in a long time! We got up and our host kindly made us coffee and gave us some fruit before we left the hostel ‘Posada donde Cupeto’ and walked through Salento to find somewhere for breakfast. The houses here really do look like they should be on the front of a chocolate box, brightly painted, wooden, quaint little buildings with verandas and balconies and lots of hanging baskets and flowers everywhere.

A typical street in Salento.

There are a lot of dogs around (Josh thinks they are rude because they only want food and not cuddles.) We found a brightly coloured hostel café that served us rice, eggs, beans and arepas, a nice big filling brunch.

The brightly coloured cafe.

Brunch to get us going!

Then we walked out of the town down through the beautiful leafy green countryside, with panoramic mountain views to a coffee farm called Las Acacias.

Our walk to the coffee farm.

We arrived and got shuttled into a tour that was just starting. We got shown around the small family run farm. The process of the growing, harvesting, drying, roasting and grinding of the coffee beans was explained to us. We even got to pick some of the beans ourselves and we tasted the raw beans too!

A metallic blue wasp carrying something.

Picking the ripe fruit.

Drying the coffee beans.

A farmer rotating the beans.

Seperating the skin from the bean.

We had a couple of americanos at the end of the tour, very tasty indeed. We got chatting to some Norwegian girls who had been on the tour with us and ended up catching a JEEP taxi ride back into town with them. We got dropped off at the main plaza and then Josh and I wandered around and found somewhere for a snack.

Palm tree's at the central plaza.

Afterwards we were walking through the town when Josh stepped up onto the pavement, lost his balance (the pavements are quite high, I think because of the amount of rainfall) his arms flailed and he bumped into a hanging basket. Something fell from the basket and very nearly hit my head so I jumped and ran behind a nearby waitress and grabbed her arm. When we looked down at the ground we discovered an absolutely huge beetle, I am so glad it didn’t land on me! The waitress and another nearby geezor were in absolute hysterics! Still reeling with shock, and with a touch of the heebie jeebies, Josh managed to put it back in the hanging basket.

Outragously huge bettle!!

We then walked up El Mirador, some sets of stairs that took us up to a panoramic view of Salento and the nearby mountains and valleys. After taking a fair few photos, we walked back through the town trying absorb its charming character and to our hostel where we spoke to mum and dad. Josh edited some pictures and I did some planning for later on in the trip. There appeared to be a storm approaching so our host knocked on our door, to pin up a big tarpaulin sheet over our Juliet balcony doors, as he said the water would flood through otherwise! Thankfully the storm must have passed us by so we headed out for some dinner. We went to a trip advisor recommended place called ‘Etnia Arte y Sabor’ which was an understated tiny little cheap restaurant, with delicious food. We had asparagus soup, then chicken, potatoes, rice and salad and a little piece of homemade fudge for a sweet. Then we went round the corner to a bar where we played the game Tejo, the Colombian national sport which involves throwing cylindrical stone pucks at explosive targets in a clay pit! We were pretty awful at it but it was good fun! We walked back home and got ourselves settled in for the rest of the night.