After Medellin we drove a couple of kilometers north to get to the central cordillera of Colombia. We (or I) was on the search for some coffee covered hillsides and unspoiled beauty. So our daily plans focused on being off the beaten path, finding donuts, and drinking coffee. We started our city-detox with the quaint town of Santa Fe de Antioquia.
Not only does this town have a beautiful square and well preserved whitewashed homes, but there was also a HUUUUUGE bridge just outside. Todd being a geotechnical engineer, we had to check it out. He’s always impressed with how they construct things down in South America today or how they constructed it in the past. Strong building materials are frequently hard to come by, the amount of risk accounted for in calculations quite low, or the budget is simply different than it would be in the States. In the States we usually have big budgets and high safety factors or consequences (road closures) if we don’t over-build. (Some geotech grad school for me and many conversations with Todd have helped me accumulate this knowledge).
There are several maps I’ve seen that describe exactly where the “coffee region” is. Frankly, it’s wherever people choose to grow it. There have been sides of HIGHWAYS near Anserma with plants spilling onto the pavement, hillsides COVERED in coffee plants outside of Pereira, and random little bushes by the dirt roads leading to Salaminas. The underlined towns are some of the places we stopped along our journey. But the red route is designated as the Ruta de Cafe.
My favorite part of the coffee area is seeing the hillsides with banana plants and coffee. From far away the banana or platano trees look like stars dotting the hillsides.
After Santa Fe de Antioquia, our coffee tour took us to Jardin for Semana Santa, or Holy Week which leads up to Easter. Afterwards we drove on to Filandia, Aguadas, Salamina, and Salento.
The amount of colonial Spanish influence here is astounding. Another overlander has done a nice job documenting most of the quaint colonial towns in Colombia during their 6 month stint here. Everything from the religious art in the gorgeous churches, down to the haciendas where farmers live today.
I can’t get enough of the colorful trim and whitewashed walls. I might just have to build a house like this one day. I continue to wonder what the reason for all the use of color is. It seems like a lavish decoration, requiring time and money. But maybe it is a quiet expression of joy? The Colombians who are alive today have been terrorized and suppressed by local cartels and larger groups like the FARC for a good part of their life. Well before Escobar’s rise to power, the Spanish invaders looted the indigenous people of their copper, gold, platinum, silver, and copper-gold alloy, tumbaga. I would paint my balcony and window trim to help me deal with the sadness of everday realities, at the least it would bring small amounts of joy to everyday life.
The men in these regions wear elegant sombreros and shawls draped over their shoulders. It took a lot of self control not to buy such an outfit for Todd…
We tried to thoroughly immerse ourselves into the Semana Santa celebrations. We attended any procession we heard would be happening (let’s face it, Jardin is a pretty small town and there isn’t much more to do than relax and drink coffee). This immersion was very intriguing for me. I’ve been to many different churches in different countries, obviously Poland and the States, but also Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and there is always a new twist on how the Catholic Church practices Catholicism. We heard about solemn processions in Guatemala for Semana Santa and I was very curious as to what we would experience.
Photos of the Minor Basilica throughout the week:
A very solemn start to the celebrations of the week:
Between walks to the center for coffee/people watching and the Easter celebrations, we had an awesome week in Jardin. It felt like we were beginning to get an insider’s view into the daily flow of life and general chilled-out vibe to a typical Colombian coffee town. Eventually we decided it was time to move on if we every wanted to get to Cartagena to ship Lola home. The clock was ticking…but how do you leave behind such beautiful valley views?
Along the way we found cute Aguadas, which houses Colombia’s Hat Museum-totally worth a visit! Although it was rainy we had a great time walking the little streets and sampling donuts at the bakery on the square.
So many types of hats in Colombia! It all depends on what your natural resources are. Here we have palm leaf, cucumber-like loofah, ficus plant, and the last one I can’t place (it was a felt-like texture).
There are a lot of reminders that Colombia is still in development. Barbed wire fence lines and metal gates around your house double as clothes lines, house are made of mud over split bamboo, and the infamous red brick lines most constructions.
After a couple of days of traveling up and down through valleys, on the mostly paved windy roads, we reached Filandia. Seemingly the most developed (after Jardin) but still off the beaten track. Here we enjoyed a coffee tour, ate many varieties of oranges and limes right off the trees, took our first Willy Jeep ride, and found amazing sugar cookies that we could not resist.
How can one not fall IN LOVE with such cute and joyful colors on window and door trim???
Every coffee farm seems to have their own process of rinsing the beautiful red berries and then drying them. We loved the roof drying system at this finca. The roof has a retractable corrugated metal covering which is conveniently pulled over the beans if the sun gets too strong or the rain starts falling.
Things were swell. We were having a great time. But Todd’s birthday was coming up and I insisted we find a beautiful remote campsite somewhere away from civilization. Well, it turned out we found the remote campsite, well away from civilization, but I didn’t account for all the rain that would follow. When we tried to leave the site after 3 days, we got “stuck” (this really just means we had to find a way to get Lola out of a muddy situation).
We spent about 1 hour clearing pine needles off of this muddy, slightly inclined, soggy stretch of forest road. It was exciting… I actually helped to push Lola up the hill when she began to slip. Not sure I want to repeat this experience though. (Notice how I am out of breath and Todd, who drove up the hill, is calmly explaining the slippery spots).
After the hard work we realized we needed to go to Salento and hang out with friends we met in Medellin. Thankfully Clunk Monkey, We Are Alive Na Estrada, and Driven to Wander hadn’t left yet! This is also where we met 300 Days South, a Canadian family that shipped to Veracruz, Mexico right before we did. Proof of our good times starts at 6:00 minutes in this video. Thanks for capturing my butt, We Are Alive Na Estrada!
I tried hard to resist liking Salento because it’s THE place backpackers flock to for their coffee finca tour and cute colorful haciendas. But Salento got the best of me. It’s still a small enough town for the arrieros to walk around with their colorful ruanas (sun ponchos) on their shoulders and Willy Jeeps to drive you to the nearby attractions.
Our endearment for Salento also stemmed from the fact that we found a beautiful campsite (with free egg, banana, and coffee breakfasts) where we met lots of other Overlanders. First there was Clunk Monkey and Driven to Wander. Then the young Swiss, then the older Swiss, then the lovely Brazilians of We Are Alive, and finally the kind Austrians. Great colors, great coffee, great breakfasts, great people, how could you not love it?
We also managed to invite a little kitten friend in the playground. Don’t worry, we didn’t take him with us…
WAX PALMS! Cocora Valley is infamous for its tall weird looking palms…but we drove a bit further on and found the motherload of wax palms on the road leading to Toche. It was starkly beautiful. But I also got to thinking-where is all the natural vegetation??????????????? Why are there just cows and palms? I would love to see what this area once was and could be again, but humans have to stop being forced into making profits and single crop production…we’re lucky we have a choice in the United States, but here I believe some people are forced into the farming their parents started because how else would you make money?
It’s geographically obvious that our trip in South America is ending, but there’s nothing like having to tell other travelers this news. That is what really started to set it in focus for me. Everyday we’ve been down here, we realize how lucky we are to be doing this trip. We are 100% healthy, strong, curious, and careless enough to keep our minds open to new people and their ways of seeing the world. We have experienced so many beautiful natural phenomenons and learned so much about cultures that came long before us.
It’s amazing to be doing this journey while we’re still young, too. I’m already seeing changes in how I view USA politics, needs of foreign countries, refugees and immigrants. I don’t get frustrated if we have to wait for hours to get something fixed or we need to search for a specific service. This time on the road has also redefined that the human relationship is so important. There’s no way we would have had as good of a trip down here if people didn’t reach out a hand to help us when things broke on the van or we were searching for a safe place to spend the night. I say “Gracias!” more than I realize…
I used to be OK with a once a year trip to a foreign destination. But now, now I know, there are so many destinations. You don’t even have to leave your country for a destination. I miss some of the common/ routine things at home (celebrating holidays with others, a good pizza, a clean restaurant bathroom, strong wifi). I know I don’t need any of them and I’m very privileged to have access to all of them. And I think I want to keep being outside of the US to remember that most of the world lives with out privilege, which folks in the USA take for granted.
Our campsites for the night are sometimes glamorous, but sometimes not. And that’s how the road goes.
We are currently working on shipping Lola to Veracruz, Mexico. Our next blog will be about our short stint in Bogota, Colombia’s capital.
We drove through Colombian Coffee Country from March 27th through April 23rd, 2018.