The coffee region has been calling our names ever since we left Armenia. The clouds that drape the the towering green mountains each morning. The fiery sunsets that hang above the mountain’s peak, suspended in time. The coffee region holds it’s sway over all who visit, and has coaxed many into retirement. Maybe one day we will live the life of leisure, tucked away in the valley.
The last time we visited the region we only took a quick tour of the town of Salento, and it captured our hearts. We immediately started planning a return trip. This time we stayed in the little town for three days, and we couldn’t have had a better view or a better host. If you stay in Salento I highly recommend Terrazas de Salento.
Our first day we stayed in the town, taking in the local arts, listening to local music, and sipping the locally grown coffee. We spent our second day in Salento at the Ocaso coffee farm, learning the process from seed to cup. We planted seeds, picked coffee beans, milled the husks to release the beans, and made fresh coffee. We are now first rate coffee snobs.
Salento is a great place for rest and relaxation, but there is also a lot of nature to explore. The third day of our trip we went into the wild. We took a hike in the coccora valley, into bosques de coccora. The hike is beautiful, and at times demanding. The first part of the hike runs along farmland, where horses run through fields, and cows lazily chew cud. The next hour and a half takes you through the forest, past waterfalls, over rickety hanging bridges, rushing streams, and up to a hummingbird sanctuary in the clouds.
You can continue hiking on one of the multiple paths after reaching the hummingbird sanctuary but we decided to head back down the mountain.
The sky was beginning to look ominous, so we headed back hoping to bypass any rainstorms that may be coming our way. The sky opened up and unleashed torrents of rain about 15 minutes into our hike down, and continued for another hour. It rained so hard that at certain points we were unsure if we were still on the trail, or if we had stumbled into the creek bed. If one of our five readers works for Canon, we wouldn’t mind a new camera, ours got soaked during the hike. Just throwing that out there. Luckily, our GoPro is waterproof and I was able to get some video footage of the hike. Video coming soon, I have not yet mastered the art of video editing. At the end of our trip our camera was broken, we were cold, wet, exhausted, and bruised, but none of that really mattered. The memories we made on that hike together are worth more than any camera.