A short bus ride south brought me into the Zona Cafetera - coffee country The land required to grow the coffee has the added advantage if being picturesque - lots of little towns often beautifully situated in a "bowl" of hills. My first stop was El Jardin where I spent the end of Holy Week - Semana Santa. El Jardin is a small town of about 30,000 but it has a cathedral and plaza which would grace a capital city!
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| El Jardin |
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| The Cathedral |
The night I arrived was Good Friday and there was a service and procession called "Las Seite Palabras" The seven words of Christ - the whole town seemed to have gathered in the plaza and the cathedral spilled over. At the end of the service a figure of Christ was taken down from the cross and paraded round the town - amazingly atmospheric!
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| Jesus being taken down from the cross... |
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| ...and paraded in the streets |
The rest of my time there was spent hiking in the hills above Jardin - the best scenery of Colombia so far!
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| View from the hostel kitchen window |
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| A view over beautiful El Jardin |
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| Friendly local |
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| This is coffee country after all.... |
A rural paradise but with a military presence - the further south you go the more guerilla activity there is.. however FARC have promised not to come into the towns
My next destination was Salento - 3 buses and 7 hours south The first bus ride was one of the bumpiest I have ever taken - unmade roads, massive potholes and vertigo inducing drop offs added to the fun! Salento is another cute pueblo - what wasn't cute was the arrival of a rainy cold front - very English weather 6 degrees above the equator!! It didn't put me off my hiking as you can see but I did get soaked to the skin for my trouble!
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| The road to Salento!!! |
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| Lots of creepy crawlies around.... |
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| Hummingbird in Corcora Valley |
I was due to take a little trip to Pijao just a couple of hours away but sadly the lady with the only hostel there had closed it up for three months - I mean what kind of person gives up their job and goes off for months on end...? ;-)
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| Corcora Valley |
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| Tejo - a bit like boules but when you hit the little triangular papers they explode - they are packed with dynamite you see!! |
Plan B took me to Popayan - the furthest south this trip would take me. It also brought me in touch with more Scottish people than I had seen in the last 5 months! The hostel I stayed in was run by Scots - the guy in the next bed to me in the dorm was a Scot and that evening we went out to a bar run by - yeah you guessed it another Scot! Colin the bar owner twisted our arms at the end of the night and took us to a Pena - an Andean dancing club! It's difficult to describe Andean dancing - suffice to say I am no better at Andean than I am at Salsa!! It was a great experience though made all the better by the friendly locals dragging us uncoordinated gringos onto the dance floor!
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| Popayan Plaza complete with resident Shetland Pony!! The Scottish connections are everywhere.... |
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| Gotta be the cutest dog of the trip!! |
After 3 hours sleep I had to hop on another bus - this time east to the strange land of Tierradentro - this translates as "The Land Inside" a name given to it by the Spanish because it's landscape seemed so unusual it didn't resemble the lands around it. The scenery here was stunning - huge wooded valleys and gorges. A great hike took me around the town and from one valley to another. Dotted around the countryside are amazing underground tombs some from the 6th century - amazingly some had original paintings inside.
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| Gorgeous scenery here in Tierradentro |
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| Ancient sculpture |
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| Another ancient sculpture with my faithful hounds Mokus and Mono who followed me round the valley for 7 hours!! |
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| Inside of the tombs with preserved artwork |
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| The descents into the tombs were pretty steep! |
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| Mokus waiting for me at the tomb entrance... |
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| Colombian Army - nice smiley guys! |
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| There is still some FARC sympathy down here - these stencils on a wall glorifying these terrorists... |
The plan after Tierradentro was to move onto San Agustin - another area with archeological parks but Colombia's farmers had other ideas - they called a "Paro" - literally a stoppage - tractors and combine harvesters blocked the road and nobody was going anywhere! The Paros can last weeks so I felt myself lucky in some ways that I had not got to San Agustin as I could have been trapped there! Every seasoned traveller has a Plan B - in this case the B stood for Bogota and I hopped on the bus to Colombia's capital!
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| The Paro is here - don't I know it!! |
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Yeah - no passe!!
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Comments? Questions? Suggestions? email me at
iain.mcallister@googlemail.com
