Can I Get Some Coffee

A couple of things to report from Colombia, firstly the reports we see and hear at home, are dated by ten years or more. The current regime has cleaned up the countries act, with mass police enforcement, and a large military presence.

With that out of the way, we started off travelling through Colombia quite quickly breaking up the long journeys, with short stays in some of the smaller towns. First stop Pasto, a small town, with a nice big square, and a few little coffee shops. Next came Popayan, a traditonal town, with lots of white washed buildings, and again lots of little coffee shops, with a huge variety of coffee. From there we travelled to Cali, a notorious town throughout South America, where you can get the best contraband currency. Then came Solento (more in a moment). Then our first lengthy stay in Medellin, with its most famous son, Pablo Escobar, the streets of Medellin have been cleaned up, so to speak, but they are still far from perfect. Then came our one and only overnight bus, taking us to Cartagena, a town on the Caribbean coast. Which brings us to our current stopping place of Santa Marta, the final resting place of the revolutionary Simon Bolivar.


A Fernando Botero Sculpture



A wet Popayan



Get on the white bus!!





The Wax Palms



Solento Views

Coffee




Valley Cocora

Well back to Solento, hidden in the hills surrounding Valley Cocora, and home to some of the biggest producing coffee farms, a small town home to 8000 people, with many thousands of visitors, coming every year for the coffee. Firstly the hostel, in the middle of nowhere, part of a fully operational diary farm(our own little worthy). Amazing place to kick back and relax, away from the hustle bustle of big city life, surrounded by Colombia´s national tree, the Wax Palm. Then for the reason we came, a visit to a working coffee plantation, owned, worked, and ran by Don Elias, a guy well into his 70´s, all the plants are farmed, peeled, dried, roasted and ground by hand. The tour was done by the man himself, whilst wielding a machete, telling us all about the different plants, and flowers growing on his land. Then at the end the best cup of coffee you will ever taste, having ground the beans for yourself.

Don Elias himself

OMG it's Journey... a mitad del mundo

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The Fake Equator

We took a bus 22km north of quito, to Mitad del Mundo, quite literally meaning centre of the earth. At Mitad is the official equatorial line, placed by the French invaders, here they built a big monument and painted a yellow line on the floor. The locals refer to it as a theme park, it consists of a few museums and an observatory!

However 200m further north is the "real" equator,000 latitude on gps, to my mind a guesstimate by the French that was only 200m out is a decent bit of work! At inti nan(the real equator) they make a bit more of a show about the whole deal, showing water going straight down the drain on the equator, and clockwise or anti clockwise one side or the other of the equator! They also have a few displays about some of the different cultures in Ecuador!

Another trip in Quito was up the second highest cable car in the world, this gave us amazing views of the city, and allowed us to see the vastness of the city! From the top we had the opportunity to climb another volcano, however been there done that, and we didn't know how far we would need to walk!

Our last big outing in Quito was to the basilica, a monster of a church on the edge of old town, here we climbed numerous steps, spiral stair cases, and ladders. To scale the heights of two of the spires, and give shaky legs when looking straight down!

The Fake Equator



The Basilica



From the top of Teleferico