Day 18: Armenia, Salento, Cocora (Colombia)
Colombians eat/celebrate with family on Christmas Eve and open presents at midnight and often stay up all night drinking. Then they like to go out for lunch, dinner, movies etc to escape mess of a house on Christmas day. Many are also apparently severely hung over. So we started our full day a little early in an attempt to beat crowds by 11am and later.
While driving to Salento, we went by former house of Carlos Lehder Rivas and heard how he flew drugs over an island in the Caribbean then power boated it to Miami. And then when extradited to the US how he attempted to take down everyone including Pablo Escobar. And then the crazy stuff Escobar did to avoid extradition by offering to build his own prison to avoid being turned over to the United States.
We then learned about the Juan Valdez coffee character and how the first guy portraying a farmer from Colombia was neither a farmer nor a Colombian but rather a foreign actor.
We hired a Willys Jeep in Salento to take us to Cocora with our guide. Our Jeep was from 1954 and had the engine rebuilt once. The ones that have all original parts are worth over $30k because they are beloved.
Hike over 500 meters in altitude gain to Finca la Montaña ending at 2860M (9400ft) early enough in day to be ahead of the crowds and with some gorgeous weather with great view of Morogacho at the top across a valley. This view happens less than 5x per month. Then we hiked back down taking about 2.5 hours total for high altitude hike.
I told our guide, Guillermo, over lunch about eating ants and worms the other day in Bogota and he said he could not do that. I also told him about the Coloma coffee liqueur and he said that and one other one are good and he'd show me as we walked through town. So we went into a store while walking the main street toward Plaza Bolivar and he pointed it out. The proprietor offered a taste of another one that was sweeter but not as good in my mind. Then she offered Jill and I a small chocolate piece. Jill ate it to discover coffee bean inside and made the greatest face that had me and Guillermo laughing so hard.
During lunch our guide also told us about one of the great wonders of Colombia that nobody knows about that he wants to visit. It's the Caño Cristales - the river of five colors. It looks amazing but getting there isn't easy and only colorful part of the year (July-September). First you fly from Bogota to Villavicencio then another plane to La Macarena then a guide can potentially take you the rest of the way which might be multi-hour hike. But wow. Just read more about it.
We went to Jesus Martin coffee shop for coffee. This guy really started the good coffee revolution in Colombia for locals. The country was exporting basically everything and keeping the crap locally and he wanted Colombians to also enjoy the good stuff.
We had dinner with Kyra and her mom Adele who we spoke with this morning. I noticed last night that Kyra got up more than once to visit the chocolate table while we were still halfway through our meal. I was starting to think some chocolate needed to be saved for ME! So I told them this morning I was worried about the chocolate supply and found out that she lives in Gig Harbor (near Seattle). At the end of our meal just as we finished dessert, one of the candle torches by our table blew up and in slow motion I watched the fireball in the air flying toward Jill and I'm just thinking "don't land on Jill, don't land on Jill". It landed between her and the person at the table behind us. I was relieved there was no "stop, drop, roll" necessary. But we all got up and I moved us into the courtyard away from the other 5-8 candles. Staff even told us that this happens from time to time. Yikes!