Stopping For A Coffee

Salento was a name that we had heard a few times from other travellers on the route north through Ecuador and Columbia as a great place to chill and enjoy a coffee. That, as we were soon to realise, was to be the understatement of the trip and after hopping on a bus in Cali bound for Armenia (strangely enough not the ex USSR ruled state on the juncture of Eastern Europe and Asia), we were on a local Collectivo (non direct bus) to Salento. The lush green hills ubiquitously spotted with dark green coffee plants rolled by as we trundled through the countryside for an hour before arriving in Salento. At first impressions it appeared a small and friendly town, spotted in the middle of a vast countryside of hilly coffee plantations, but after luckily meeting the friendly English owner of the hostel we were looking for (in the wrong direction) we started to get the impression that it was to be so much more.

We checked into the Plantation House hostel and talked with the owner for a while about what there was to do in the small town. He suggested that we go for a wander and then have a coffee at Café Jesus (the name of the owner) before heading out to play a curious local game in the centre. We ate well and then popped around the corner to try on of Jesus's famous coffees. The coffee itself wasn't just great but amazing: rich, perfectly roasted and less than a week since it had been lovingly plucked by Jesus himself (once again the coffee owner). We stayed for a matter of hours knocking back the most amazing expressos and brandy coffee's that I imagine that I will ever have the pleasure to taste and left grinning. What's more, everyone in the town stopped to say hello and welcome us to the town, hoping that we enjoyed our stay. We were starting to wonder what more we could possibly ask for in a place.

We returned to the Plantation House to pick up enough people to constitute two teams for the local game that we were about to participate in. Upon arriving we were guided to the children's section by an amused group of locals, who then went on to explain the rules of the game. In short the game requires each person to throw metal shotputs into a clay bank, rimmed with a metal ring and small packets of gunpowder, which explode when hit. In theory the game seemed simple but in practice was far more difficult than anticipated, and we definitely showed the crowd of highly interested (and slightly inebriated) onlookers how useless a pack of Gringos can really be. Once again the locals were extremely warm and especially made us feel at home, and after a similar reception at the local billiards hall it was becoming clear that Alex, Emily and I were beginning to fall in love with Salento, Columbia, and the warm people we encountered pretty much everywhere.

The next day we set off on an hours walk to a local plantation owned by an old man named Don Elias, although after getting a bit lost we were quite late and ended up doing the tour with his slightly grumpy wife. Still, her slightly damp mood could not dampen ours as, after being shown the process of how they grow and prepare the coffee, we were about to have a cup that had been picked and dried less than 24 hours prior. We were very excited to say the least and trotted home content under the approaching shroud of nightfall. After two wonderfully chilled days in Salento we were about to enter the contrastingly mental world of Medellin. Exciting times were ahead.