Salento, Good To The Last Drop

The coffee region became more and more stunning with every mile as we rode in the back of a small bus for the five hour trip to Salento. When we arrived, it was obvious that Salento must lie in the pinnacle of the beauty. Forested mountains dominated the horizon as far as we could see, their peaks obscured by misty clouds that raced by and oozed down the hillsides. Coffee plantations and old farmhouses filled the valleys extending from every angle around the town. Walking through the streets felt like going back in time. Old cowboys with mustaches and ponchos rode by in groups on horses and packed around tables in billiard halls.



Customers stood in line in a butcher shop with huge sides of beef and whole pig carcasses hanging from meat hooks behind the counter, with cow's heads stacked on the floor. Kids and old people sat on benches in front of shops and restaurants with white walls, multicolored doorways, and thick wooden shutters.

We found our hotel, La Casona de Lili, and went in through an old wooden hallway and staircase that smelled and squeaked like it had been waxed daily for 150 years. Lili greeted us with hugs and boisterous Spanish conversation, most of which we couldn't follow. We each got our own room with queen beds, an antique lamp, and simple shelves, for $8 each. Lili likes to cook, so we ordered some dinner. Russ got the Salento specialty, river trout - literally every restaurant in town sells it - and I got a chicken rice dish. That night we went hung out in the plaza and met a bunch of locals, who we ended up hanging out with every night for the next several days we stayed.

Besides hanging out around town, Salento had some great hiking. We walked down through town, across a bridge, and down a dirt road which descended into one of the valleys towards a big coffee plantation.



Little kids followed us along, saying “hello” over and over again to practice the only English word they knew. Farmers walked by guiding lines of cattle strung together with ropes towards their gruesome fate at the butcher shop. We took pictures of the views that appeared around every corner and picked coffee berries off the bushes, cracking them open to see the white, slick raw beans inside. Old Willy jeeps bumped down the road carrying groups of school children in full uniforms who waved and laughed as they went by. We turned around at the bottom of the road and headed back up the long hill as a guy in a beat up old red Datsun struggled by us with his car loaded in every nook and cranny and piled on the roof with bunches of bananas. Colombia is bananas.



The Valle de Cocora, home of Colombia's national tree, the wax palm, sits up in the mountains about 30 minutes from Salento. We took a jeep up to the last small town. From there, we trekked up a dirt road that eventually became a trail. All around us, growing from the grassy hillsides, were soaring wax palms, these skinny palm trees 200 feet tall with a cluster of leaves at the very top. The whole area looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.



The trail crossed back and forth across a river, then up further into the mountains. Occasionally we would cross muddy streams, rustling up dozens of small, brightly-colored butterflies that would fly all around us before landing back in the mud. As has been the case throughout Colombia, we had this place all to ourselves, and didn't run into any other hikers for almost the entire time.



On Sunday the town went crazy. Salento is a popular weekend getaway for people from the surrounding areas as far away as Bogota. Big tents popped up in the plaza, all serving trout. Guys with carts decorated as miniature party buses or with fake horses gave little kids rides around the central park and fountain. Every other person had an ice cream cone. I bought a poncho and borrowed a hat from the Lili, and we played pool in one of the billiards halls with a couple friends from the hotel alongside all of the old cowboys. People passing by outside couldn't believe their eyes when they saw our gang of gringos in there, and crowded around the doors and windows with cameras and camcorders to document the oddity. It was a Sunday Funday.



We relaxed around town the following day, hiked up a hillside overlooking town, caught up on some emails and phone calls, and left on Tuesday for Popayan.