WHY YOU HAVE TO VISIT SALENTO IN COLOMBIA

When we visited Colombia I knew that we had to visit the coffee region. I had seen pictures of the dreamy Cocora Valley and discovered that you can easily visit the Cocora Valley as a day trip from Salento. We decided to stay in Salento for three days and found that the perfect amount of time to explore this beautiful area. Read on to see what we did in Salento!

The lush green surroundings made for the perfect contrast with my pink skirt.

Salento

We took a direct bus from Medellin to Salento (about € 15 per person), which took about 8 hours. Salento was one of the locations in Colombia I was most excited about to visit, as near to Salento you will find the super special landscapes of Valle de Cocora, which is a wax palm tree valley that looks like it comes out of the Teletubbies. Salento has only been receiving tourists for seven years, as before it was dangerous to come here because of the FARC. Right now it is a quite charming, little town, which reminded me of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico. We stayed at Posada Casa Salento (€ 25 per night including breakfast), which had the perfect location; just a block down from the main square. We had two full days to spend in Salento, which worked out fine for us, but we did really like this place and there are many more activities you can do (such as horse riding). In October it is rainy season in Salento and in the afternoon we had lots and lots of rain. I have never seen and heard rain this hard.. which is why I don’t have a lot of pictures of Salento itself.. We did the following activities in Salento:

Valle de Cocora: One of the highlights of our Colombian trip; the beautiful Cocora Valley! You can take a Willy jeep from the central square in Salento to bring you to the Cocora Valley for € 1 per person one-way. This is where all the fun starts, because the jeeps won’t leave until they’re completely overcrowded. Some people even have to stand at the back of the jeep, Hielke of course loved this. At the Cocora Valley you can do a long hike (4-5 hours) or a short hike (2 hours). We did the short hike, because we expected the rain to come in and we wanted to experience the Cocora Valley in the best way possible. We walked to two viewpoints, the ascent is actually quite steep (nobody tells you about that), but in the end the hike was doable for unexperienced hikers like me 😉 We loved the amazing views of the Cocora Valley and luckily it wasn’t crowded at all! We paid an entrance fee to the Cocora Valley of € 1, which makes this the perfect budget activity. When you get down from the hike, there are usually jeeps waiting to take you back into Salento (20 minutes).

Jeeps at the central square
You can see the palm trees in the background during the hike up

Coffee farms: In the proximity of Salento you can visit many coffee farms, we didn’t do any research on the farms, but just hopped into one of the Willy jeeps to take us to a farm. Transport is again € 1 one-way and a coffee tour costs about € 5, depending on which one you visit, and it includes a cup of coffee. Unfortunately it started pouring rain when we arrived to coffee farm Las Acacias and we had to wait for two hours for the tour to start. We were in the company of some funny Spanish/Catalan men, so we made the best of it. Luckily the weather got better and we still got to see the whole plantation, which was super beautiful! Las Acacias is a super small organic coffee farm and I quickly did the math to conclude that they actually earn more money by doing tourist tours than by producing coffee 😉

Beautiful view from the coffee farm

Downhill MTB: We decided to go on a downhill MTB-tour with Mountain Bike Salento. We were brought to a mountain of 3.500 meters and we just had to glide down on our MTB-s. Along the way we visited another palm tree forest, which we had completely to ourselves! I was a bit afraid at first, but it did not turn out to be scary, because it is quite easy to monitor and adjust your speed. This tour was the most expensive tour we did in Colombia (€ 45 per person), but it was definitely a unique experience in amazing surroundings. The only downside to this tour was that our guide and driver were not very talkative, if you don’t have MTB experience or don’t speak basic Spanish, we would not recommend this tour.

The weather looks more rough than it felt 😉
We hiked down this non-touristy version of Valle de Cocora during our tour.

Tejo: Tejo is a typical Colombian game, in which you have to throw rocks on tiny explosives to score points (I know right). As I don’t like loud noises I was a bit hesitant to do this game, but I wanted Hielke to experience this game as I knew he would be super good at it. We went with a couple that we met in our hotel and had a super fun night! The noises weren’t too bad… We paid € 5 per person including two beers and of course Hielke won!

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