Salento, Colombia

I´m far enough into this trip that travel has ceased to be a vacation and has begun to be just a really, really awesome job.

I can breathe easy now. We´re up in the clean, high altitude air of the verdant Colombian mountains. I´m surrounded by the coffee farms and shockingly tall palm trees in the departmento of Quindio.

We came up here on a half-remembered tip from a fellow traveler and I´m not sure when we´re leaving. Uh oh, starting to feel that sucking feeling again.

We started out in Salento, a tiny town on the tip of a green summit with all the trappings of traditional Colombia- the tiny green plaza lined by a big white Catholic church and endless trucha, or trout restaurants. There´s a trout farm nearby and you would not believe the variety of ways Salentans have found to prepare the fish, ever-accompanied by a big, crispy patacon.

How am I talking about food again? Stop me next time. We got here for a puente, a three day bank holiday weekend, Salento´s reason for existence. We´re talking festivities in the street, vendors and artesans and rumba. Rumba. Rumba. Colombians love their rumba.

But we are being good (for the most part), and have contented ourselves with the mind-shift that is the natural world up here. We went hiking through the Valle de Corcora, where cow pastures give way to this jungle that´s like the jungles you see in your head, or maybe in the movie Fern Gully, or maybe just in the drawings of very, very creative people. We´re talking a lot of life. We´re also talking the first physical activity we´d done in a while, so we´re talking huffing and puffing up into the mountains of the cloud forest.

One rocky path took us up to a family-run reserva where we got served aguapanela con queso, a sweet, hot drink served with massive chunks of cheese culled from the neighbor´s sweetly obese cows. Sitting in a rustic palm-and-log shack, we caught our breath as the family´s pet chowed down in front of us. He was a raccoon, I think, but done crazy Colombian style with a long, anteater styled snout. I think they fed him the same bean soup we were eating.

So yeah, lots of hiking. There´s also a sick mountain biking community, who was good enough to lend my friend Krishna and I top of the line mounts for an afternoon out. We pedaled out to Don Elias´ coffee farm, where the Don himself showed us how they take that liquid gold from red or yellow bean to small perfect sipping cup. There was a odd little earthquake while we were in the bean-drying room, but Don Elias seemed took it in stride, barely interrupting his lecture on his work to tend to the gang of terrified grandkids that ran up for comfort.

I needed the caffiene later for our ride back up to Salento, an hour´s ride of constant slope to the top of the mountain. I didn´t realize that Krishna, a native San Franciscan, is a seasoned hill climber and I nearly blew out my lungs before admitting his superior quad strength. It´s been awhile since the days me and the green monster climbed up Mt. Tabor.

So this places rocks. We relocated yesterday down the hill to Boquilla, a town just big enough for a chorizo and queso shop but not much else. A lovely old hippie named Jorge has adopted Erik and I into his campsite wonderland. My favorite bits of our new habitat include waterbeds in the ´luxury tents´and superior tropical bird watching. Check out this website- click on ´Hospedajes Exoticos´and tell me I don´t have it good on this earth...

http://www.campingmonteroca.com/

Again, feeling that riptide to chill for awhile. Jorge tells me not to worry, cuz in Colombia ¨No hay de nervios.¨ Amen to that.

Yours,
CD