Explosive Entertainment in Coffee Country

When we last posted we had just visited the beautiful (and butterfly heavy!) Río Claro. Rather than staying there, we just used it as a two hour stop off to break up the bus journey between Guatapé and Honda. This bus journey was quite interesting, involving 4 different buses in the end and a total of 5 hours travel time. However, all went smoothly in the end and we arrived in Honda in the early evening, not at midnight as we had feared might happen!

The market place in Honda

Honda is not a town on many tourists' itineraries. In fact, it wasn't on ours, until we decided it'd be a good way to get to the coffee region without having to return to Medellín. We were glad we made it here though, as we didn't see a single other Western tourist! This is quite some feat in Colombia, where there is a very set 'Gringo trail' and it can be hard to escape the crowds. We hadn't realised before we got here just how popular Colombia has become as a tourist destination - in South America that we've seen so far it's probably second only to Perú. We've found in this country that we've had to reserve all our accommodation ahead (not something we'd usually do) and a lot of places have been fully booked even a week in advance! So it was nice to get off the beaten track a bit.

Puente Navarro, a famous bridge in Honda 

Lonely Planet has a very small blue box on Honda, entitled 'Hot, Hot Honda'. I kind of imagined this meant 'hot' in the sense of it heating up as a new tourist destination. But as soon as we got out out of the bus we understood that this was in fact to be taken literally. Honda is HOT! One of the hottest towns I've ever been to, including everywhere in Southeast Asia. The average daytime temperature when we were there was around 39 - 40°C, but hotel staff told us it is often up to 45. That's pretty sweltering for us Brits!

View of Honda from the other side of the river

Luckily for us, due to Honda having so few tourists we were able to stay in a lovely hotel complete with terrace, pool and aircon, for a fraction of the price you'd pay elsewhere in Colombia. We spent our one full day here checking out the sleepy colonial town (while getting slowly fried) and then returned to chill out in the pool. The town reminded us a lot of Mompox - it's focused around a river, has a lot of very pretty yet slightly crumbling colonial architecture, and shuts down completely during the hottest hours of the day. It's a pleasant place to wander around, as long as you bring copious amounts of water! We got a lot of glances from locals who were clearly not used to seeing tourists here.

Pretty streets in Honda

On the night we arrived in Honda there was a huge thunderstorm - so big our room got flooded and we had to move upstairs. In fact our arrival heralding rain after a long drought seems to be becoming a theme. In Guatapé they'd had no rain for two months, but when we got there, there was a storm that lasted all night. In Honda they'd had no rain for three months - same story! Thus we weren't too surprised when our bus got to Manizales, our next destination, and lo and behold, the heavens opened. It was torrential! We had to take a taxi from the bus station to our hostel, as our planned method of transport, a cable car, was not operating in the thunder and lightning. Staff at the hostel immediately said to us, 'It's amazing! We've had no rain for three months!'

View of Manizales from our hostel window - this was as clear as it got!

While the rain didn't really affect us in Honda and Guatapé, in Manizales once it started it didn't stop for the whole of our two days there. Therefore a lot of the activities we'd hoped to do - hiking to a viewpoint in the downpour, or climbing a 5000m mountain with zero visibility - didn't appeal so much. We did get out as far as the main square to admire the huge (ugly on the outside, much better on the inside) modern cathedral. But most of our time was spent within our very nice hostel. Manizales is a city in the heart of the coffee region of Colombia, and we'd assumed it'd get plenty of tourists. Actually, not at all - the hostel had only a couple of other people staying, and the restaurants we went to seemed surprised to see us. It was a bonus to find another non-touristy place unexpectedly.

The cathedral in Manizales - the third tallest church building in South America

So where do all the millions of visitors to Colombia's coffee country go? Not to any of the three main cities, it turns out, but to the little town of Salento, a beautiful place surrounded by rolling green hills and several coffee plantations. Salento was a bit of a shock after the last week. From seeing no westerners. suddenly there were big tour groups, souvenir shops everywhere, restaurants with touts outside... it reminded us of San Pedro de Atacama (minus the desert!). But as with many very touristy places, there are good reasons for so many people coming here. In usual style, it was pouring with rain when we first got to Salento, but fortunately after that it only tended to rain heavily in the evenings.

In the Valle de Cocora - note the tall wax palms

Salento is close to the Valle de Cocora, part of the Los Nevados national park. This valley is famous for being the main location in the country where you can find wax palm trees, Colombia's national tree and symbol. We did an excellent 5 hour trek here, starting in cloud forest, climbing up steeply to 3000m and then descending a little to a wonderful hummingbird sanctuary. Here there were hummingbird feeders and so many hummingbirds of all shapes, sizes and colours everywhere! We also saw two 'cusumbos' (coaties) - very furry animals with stripy tails. So cute! From the hummingbird reserve we descended into the valley and finished our walk seeing the wax palms. These are very cool looking - extremely tall, with thin trunks and no branches until right at the top. It was amazing seeing them lining the hillsides, or the tops emerging out of the cloud forest canopy.

Hummingbirds and coatis

View of the wax palm trees along the hills

On our second day in Salento we met up with Ralph and Shehnaaz, our friends from home who we'd seen previously in Taganga. Unfortunately, shortly after we last saw them they were involved in a nasty car accident up on the north coast, and hadn't been able to do much for the past few weeks. We were glad to see them again and see that they were gradually recovering. The four of us spent a day visiting a coffee farm called Ocaso, close to Salento. The tour in English was fantastic - we learnt loads about all aspects of coffee growing and production. As part of the tour we got to pick some of the berries ourselves, see all stages of the process (e.g. de-husking, washing, fermenting, drying, roasting...) and finally of course sample a cup of the freshly brewed final product. I am not the biggest coffee fan, but even to me it tasted pretty good!

Coffee growing - the berries need to be red before they're picked

Lady working to sort the coffee beans into 1st and 2nd class

Shehnaaz pouring the water ready for our cups of coffee

That evening after a few drinks the four of us decided we had to try a game of Tejo, a traditional sport in Colombia. It's a little like boule, or bowling, but with a twist - explosives are involved! You have to throw a heavy metal disc (2-3 pounds) from a distance of about 10m, aiming at a board angled at 45 degrees and covered in clay. At the centre of the board is a metal ring, and round the ring are placed a few small white triangles which contain gunpowder. The idea is to hit the white targets right on the metal edge so that the impact causes them to explode! The 'explosions' were just a small flame and puff of smoke. Apparently if we'd come during the day the bangs would have been louder - they're not allowed to make too much noise at night (just a thought, shouldn't this rule also apply to Colombian music?!). It was great fun though and we'd have liked to come back for another go.

Ralph playing Tejo

Kev and I needed to get going though so we said goodbye to Ralph and Shehnaaz, who we may or may not see again before we get home in June. Next stop -  south to Popayán.