Colombia, South America adventures: Armenia, Salento, Coffee plantation and insane tall palm trees!

Why did we choose Colombia as our next adventure? Good question. I've been side eye-ing this place for several years. It looked magical in pictures. The reputation of the people being incredibly lovely intrigued me. Plus, we've talked about doing more adventurous type travels. So once I built up enough Delta rewards points we decided to go ahead and cash in for our first adventure in South America!

We flew from Dallas to Atlanta then down to Bogota. Arriving to Bogota was quite the annoying experience as customs took several hours so by the time we arrived to our hotel it was late, we were exhausted and had to get up in 5 hours to head back to the airport.

Customs line in Bogota,  yikes!

A bit disappointing losing that first evening but oh well I guess, that's the advantage of doing our type of travel where we literally don't hardly make any set plans.

We flew early morning into Armenia which is a small city in the mountains in western Colombia. The region boasts itself as being a top coffee producer. Since it was only an hour flight, we got to Armenia way too early to check into our hotel so we asked our taxi driver to recommend a place for breakfast and also asked him if he wanted to join. He took us to a small hole in the wall local breakfast place (that doesn't even exist on Google, we tried to look it up even!). Our driver,Borja, helped us order as there was no menu and we ended up with some broth soup type thing and two huge plates of rice, beans and meats plus an arepa which is a cornmeal bread that is traditional here! It was so much food! And also pretty yummy.

Our driver, Borja, was super sweet!  And patient with our terrible Spanish. 

 

We then headed up to our hotel which was an absolutely gorgeous off the grid place in the mountains. It was still way too early to check in but they let us hang out on the grounds and just relax. I can't even tell you how beautiful this place is, will just post pictures for you to see yourself.

We were finally able to check into our room and were completely blown away!

A definite room with a view!

There also were tons of different types of birds (who frequently flew into our glass room) and horses and cows etc. It truly was incredibly peaceful.


I was exhausted so I took a nap while Dan relaxed on the balcony. Then we ended our night up on the elevated hot tub to relax a bit more after a long 24 hours of traveling.

We were both pretty tired and still quite full from the insane breakfast so we went back to the room in the nick of time as it started monsoon raining. It actually was pretty neat being in a glass room with the rain pouring, made for incredible sleeping lol.

The next day at breakfast we practiced Spanish with a super nice waiter at our hotel, Luis Miguel.  He was incredibly patient and we are very thankful especially to him for his hospitality.

We made our way to Salento (about 30 min away) to check out a small coffee plantation where just about everything was done by hand called Finca Momota. It was quite the trek to get there as there was a muddy "road" or walkway to get to the plantation.  We even had an alebrije dog that walked with us half the way, it was so sweet!  Reason I've decided it was my alebrije is we saw a very similar dog 2 days later that took a liking to us as well haha!

We chose a smaller plantation because we wanted a more intimate look into the coffee making process and we were so glad we did!

Our guide's name was Juan and he was so incredibly informative! We also got to talk with him and his assistant a bit about the recent protests in Colombia which gave a lot of perspective to it.

 We walked along the beautiful mountains on tiny paths, which at times was a bit disconcerting as they were super narrow on the side of a mountain. But the views were out of this world gorgeous!

So many different kinds of vegetation on the grounds!

We also had another guide in training and Chicle the dog that tagged along haha!   Chicle got his name because he sticks to the guides like gum on their shoes (chicle is gum in Spanish)!  Chicle played fetch down the mountainside with a large lemon that our guides threw.  It made for quite the experience.

 
After touring the grounds and looking at the coffee plant from a baby all the way to grandpa stage, we went back to the main house and got to try out their coffee. It was sooooo good! Way better than most the crap we get back in the States.

The beans from our coffee lesson.   No idea why I didn't take a picture of our actual coffee!  

We had such a great experience there and would highly recommend visiting the Finca Momota plantation.

Muddy Chicle taking a siesta after the tour haha!

We then went back into Salento town, wandered around for a bit then stumbled upon a cute bar/restaurant called La Parrilla that set on the side of a hill/mountain.  We talked with the bartender quite a bit practicing our Spanish. His young daughter was there as well and was so cute asking us to practice English with her! We then sat on the balcony and watched a beautiful sunset while enjoying our beers.

Gorgeous view from La Parrilla restaurant 

We met a driver there as well named Fabian who drove us back to our hotel and offered to drive us wherever we needed while in Armenia and Salento.

After a long day, we didn't feel up to leaving the hotel so we ate dinner there which was excellent! They grow much of the ingredients for their food on the grounds. Most of our orders tasted very fresh and my seafood stew was so delicious!


The next morning after a yummy breakfast at the hotel we decided to go to the Cocora Valley (Valle de Cocora) as this was high on my list to visit while here (the main reason for me wanting to make the trek to Armenia/Salento).

Breakfast with a view at Bio Habitat Hotel 

We messaged Fabian from the night before and he picked us up, took us to drop our bags at our new hotel in Salento (which btw had the most kind lady owner who didn't speak a lick of English but made us feel so welcome!).   Then drove us out to the national park. I honestly think this particular part of our trip deserves a blog post of it's own so will just leave a few pics of this gorgeous place here!

We went back into Salento on a Willy (Jeep) literally crammed with 13 people in it! Definitely wasn't comfortable at all but was like $2USD total for both of us so worth it.

Best picture I could get in the Willy,  it was that crammed!

We checked into our hotel and were quite exhausted after the several hour crazy hike so we decided to hang out in the hot tub to relax for a bit. It ended up being a neat time as we ran into two guys, Max from London (living in Andorra) and Peter from Northern Ireland. They were motorcycling around Colombia on this particular leg for a couple weeks. Max has motorcycled recently from Alaska down to Colombia and also has motorcycled down Africa and across Asia. He had quite the stories to share! And also said what we have been trying to tell people about why we travel. That most everyone they encountered have been genuinely good and kind people. He said even in the "worst" of places like Sudan he encountered incredibly kind humans. This was nice to hear as we've had mostly the same experience traveling. He also said that the most friendly people of his travels were Colombians by far. And we are finding this out to be so true so far! I wish I'd snapped a pic of Max and Peter but it was one of those experiences where we were just so caught up in the moment and genuinely enjoyed talking with fellow travelers.

We decided to hurry up and shower as it got quite late and head out to dinner. Most places were almost closed but we found a small open air cafe that served sandwiches and got the last table. There was a guy playing music on his guitar and singing and we enjoyed our dinner by candlelight. It was definitely relaxing and needed after a pretty strenuous day.

We made another dog friend at dinner.  Dan said that dogs beg in all languages haha!

We went back to the hotel to sleep... which would have been wonderful except for a couple things. We both got bug bites that itched like crazy! It kept me up for a bit (thankfully allergy meds and my few essential oils I brought along helped!). And I was finally able to doze off until like at 2, 3, 4am apparently it was party time on a Saturday night in Salento... there was a car blaring mariachi music driving around the block setting off car alarms because the base was so loud. Yikes! Needless to say, we were both exhausted.

Being exhausted was probably a good thing because we left for a long bus drive to Medellin that took about 7.5 hours. Normally being exhausted on travels makes me grumpy as hell. However, I knew we would be driving on a bus through the Andes mountains on pretty treacherous roads and I also have pretty bad motion sickness generally. So I took dramamine and coupled with my exhaustion I ended up sleeping 80% of the drive. Dan said I was lucky as I probably would have freaked out on some of the mountain passes lol.

Walking to the bus stop in Salento,  you can tell even from this far away how tired I look!

Bus stop in Salento.  How cute is this place?!

On the bus, about 20 seconds before I passed out.

So that ends our first few day's adventures here in Colombia! Will update here in a few days of our time in Medellin. Salud!