Day 1-4 COLOMBIA: Coffee Region

One cannot arrive to Colombia without apprehension caused by everything you hear in the news. Yet, when you get here, the reality is completely different: people are so friendly and peacefull that war seems to be centuries away... In the parque of Montenegro, time seem to have stopped and campesinos in traditional clothes hang around and converse in the most tranquil way.

Montenegro, in the middle of the coffee region, is our first stop in Colombia. At an altitude of around 1000m, the coffee region is the new favourite vacations place for upper class and expatriate Colombians: year round warm climate, lush tropical vegetation, no malaria risk, no guerilla risk.
This is the finca where we stayed for a few days, in the middle of coffee and banana plantations!

The region is also very mountainous, and you can pretty much choose the temperature for the day by choosing the altitude you go to. For our first evening, we went to the thermal waters of Santa Rosa de Cabal at 2000m: 15 degrees in the air, and 40 degrees in the water!

We spent our second day in the village of Salento, before heading up to the cloud forest at 2300m. This valley is the starting point for the ascension of Nevado Tolima (5200m)

Here, Caro and I are having a typical Colombian lunch with our Taxi driver we hired for the day "Hector". We´re having Mondongo as a first dish, which is a stomach soup, rice with beef as main dish, a fruit juice and a tinto, local term for an expresso. All this for about 1,30 Euros!

Dave