Salento - Valle del Cocora

We arrived an hour later in the bus "terminal" of Salento due to a lot of roadwork on the way. There were also signs of landslides along the way, probably the news we had seen three days back. We had slept okayish but were still pretty tired when we arrived. From the terminal it was about 10 minutes walk to the hostel and when we arrived we called a number to get in... Buuut they didn't answer the phone and it said that they will return on Wednesday on the door 🙄🙈
After several failed calls and some knocking we heard some noise and finally the door was opened and we were let in by the sweet owner, Lili. She apologized that the phone was out and offered us a tea or coffee. But we had already planned to go to a nearby viewpoint to see the sunrise over the incredibly scenic Cocora Valley. It was a little cloudy but the sky got soon illuminated red and pink from the rising sun.

We walked through the village but it was only 07:30 so most of the shops were still closed. The great thing about it was that the doors were closed and you could see the beautiful colourful buildings along the streets. The style is a bit different than the towns we've seen before and yet similar. It's difficult to explain 😅 Our plan was to go into the Cocora Valley as early as possible because it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. So we took a "Willy", a Jeep converted to carry up to 15 people, just not very comfortable... But it was okay for the 15km ride at a pretty cheap rate. After getting off the Jeep we walked in direction of the valley and when there was a ticket booth we continued on because we had looked up a 10 km loop.
After about 2km it started getting muddy and we were soon almost alone walking along a river... When we passed a tour group the guide said that in this direction is only the 5 days trek to the Nevado del Quindio but we had checked that there is a trail and it was on our maps so we continued on. A woman from Portugal, Sonia, had joined us despite us telling her that we're not sure what we're doing 😅 The trail got extremely muddy and quite steep and Julia slipped several times. But it was super beautiful in the cloudy rainforest we were on our own with the thick green vegetation and a magnitude of different bird songs. After about three kilometers the muddy and bad trail merged with the main trail where a lot of tourists were wandering all clean, unlike us 😁 From there it was just a kilometer more to the uppermost viewpoint where we had a relaxed late breakfast with snacks. And there we got beautiful views over the valley and the famous highest palm trees in the world standing tall in the rainforests and on plains. We enjoyed the easy hike down on the well made trails of the park while taking some pictures. Then we returned back to town with the Jeep and booked a tour to a coffee plantation 😍☕

Once again we were transported with a Willy about 6km away to the coffee plantation of Luger (not associated with German name) where we were greeted by a guide in perfect English. We got a coffee for the welcoming, then he seated us next to a family of 3 that also joined in on the tour. They were from Austria and the father had been making (roasting?) his own coffee. The 2 hour tour was interesting, the guide was very knowledgeable and we're glad to get to know the Colombian highland coffee better ☺️

We returned to the town and were recommended a restaurant by the hostel owners. I've tried a Cazuela de frijoles which was super delicious and so was Julia's vegetarian Bandeja paisa. After returning to the hostel we washed off the mud leftovers from the hike and then booked our flights on to Quito. Initially we had wanted to take the bus but a landslide between Cali and the border to Ecuador is interrupting the traveling. And as there was anyway only one town in Colombia and one in Ecuador that we wanted to have a look at we're saving some time while it costs the same.Read more