The zona cafetera

The zona cafetera is the triangle made by 3 towns: Manizales, Pereira and Armenia.
We spent 4 days in the area and I can safely say we did a lot of trecking.
In our mind 3 are the activities we liked the most:
1) Visiting the Santa Rosa SPA
This is an open spa with a natural spring with boiling water, a waterfall in the background and beatiful sceneries all around.
Being a Colombian spa, salsa and merengue is obviously being played by loud speakers and people will dance even while they are in the hot pool

 2) Visiting the Finca of Don Elias in Salento

Don Elias is 74 and has worked all his life as a coffee farmer.
15 years ago at the age of 59, after saving money during his whole life, he finally bought his own finca
The Finca counts roughly 1000 coffee plants, producing around 10Kg of coffee each.
The production is high quality 100 % organic (no pesticides used)
Because the production is high quality it is sold at around £5 per Kg.

Coffee grains are picked only twice a year (the gathering season lasts around 2 weeks).
An expert worker can collect around 120kg of coffee per day.
Workers are paid 360 pesos per Kg.That is the equivalent of 13 pence per kg or roughly £15 a day!!!
We are told that they constantly risk of being bitten by snakes, spiders, tarantulas, frogs and even poisonous worms.
Once the coffee grain is picked it is fermented for 1 day, then the 1st skin is removed with a machine, then dried in the sun for 8 days and after that the 2nd skin is removed.
Finally it is toasted to give it his brown colour and that unmistakable aroma.

 Here I am taking a picture with don Elias and Carlos after buying some of their own made coffee.

3) Tracking in the Cocora Valley

This was quite a challange. We left early in the moring and we covered around 15 km over 5 hrs.
The climb took us as high as 2860.



What made it particularly difficult was the constant rain and the crossing of slippery wooden bridges above torrents.
Here's Elena crossing fearlessly.

Finally, at the end of the day the sun came out showing us the valley in its entire beauty.
The palms growing in this valley are as tall as 60 meters and grow at an altitude close to 3000 meters.