Salento

I love small towns. Everything is easy. The access, finding a place to stay (or sometimes the place to stay), walking around....it’s just easy. And mostly, it’s real. Cities have their own attractions, but the real Colombia is in the small towns. Salento: population 4000, elevation 2000 m, smack in the middle of the zona cafetera, and with that perfect mix of cafes and old guys sporting ponchos and machetes. Like Nelson, it’s just far enough off the beaten track to keep it real, but close enough that you can get to it and enjoy the comforts of civilization (good coffee, at last!).

The ride from Pereira to Salento was pretty tame. Either we’re becoming immune to the climbs or getting better at managing them, or both, but we both commented on the fact that upon arrival a couple days ago we didn’t instantly collapse onto the bed as we usually do. So hey, we might just be able to complete this mission after all (had our doubts there for a while). One step at a time though, Boliva is in front of us (yikes!). We’ll have this conversation again in a few months from now when we’re at 4000 m.

It was a big night in town when we arrived; actually all over Columbia. Columbia advanced itself in a pivotal FIFA World Cup qualifier game against Ecuador. I don’t think it’s news to anyone that soccor (aka futbol) is beyond huge here and elsewhere throughout South America. And, given the shared border, Columbia and Ecuador are huge rivals. The game was in Barranquilla, a city on the coast we cycled through a few weeks ago. We knew about the game from my now daily browsing of “Columbia Reports”, an on-line English-language newspaper. It was really cool to see everyone everywhere getting pumped for the game. The bright yellow team-Columbia jerseys were everywhere all day long during our ride. Riding through Salento’s el centro in the early afternoon we could see them propping up the beer tents and flat-screen TVs for the 3:30 pm start. It was pandemonium in the square when the final whistle blew leaving Columbia with a 1-0 win over Ecuador – almost as loud at it would be with a Toronto win over Montreal for the Stanley cup J

 Today we walked through our rite of passage as Colombian travelers and took the quintessential coffee tour, lead by Juan Valdez himself (his name is Don Elias, but he could have been Juan Valdez). It was a wonderful stroll down the mountain from town to Senor Elias’s organic coffee farm, followed by an in-depth explanation of everything coffee. There was the minor issue that Senor Elias doesn’t speak a word of English, but we managed, and we think we understood the majority of what he was telling us. At the end of it all, while sipping on a cup of his fine brew, we didn’t have the heart to tell him that we couldn’t buy a pack of coffee from him because we don’t want to carry it on our bikes (and, I couldn’t think of how to explain that in my gringo Spanish), so we bought a pack of coffee off him to take back to our hostel. Free coffee this afternoon at the Tralala Hostel in Salento!

For those of you keeping track, I believe we’re at the second key trip milestone (see previous “made it” post): everything has become normal. It’s one of those critical moments in a long trip where you just feel at home. Arepas, empendas, plato typico, aguila, buenos dias ...all normal now. Even the blarring latino top-40. Probably couldn’t get to sleep without it now (ok, that’s a lie, but you get the point). Amy even has a favourite beer now: Redd’s dry – not the regular one, the “dry”.

 Salento. Pretty much your iconic Colombian coffee mountain town. We’ve been living the good life of a fantastic hostel, slow mornings, daily walks around town, coffee tours, and evening sunsets over the mountains. If we didn’t have another 10,000 kms or so to cover, we would probably just stay here. But alas, the road calls. We must advance the troops. Tomorrow we ride for Cali, the big city of, and apparently, salsa capital of the world (the dance, not the stuff we put on nachos). According to the elevation profile, we go down, way down, for about 200 kms right into Cali. We’re both pretty stoked about that and what should be an easy few days of riding – perhaps even coasting! Although, what goes down has to come back up around here....but we won’t think about that for now. See you in Cali.