Pereira and Surroundings

We met our Backroads hiking group at the Hotel Sazagua on the outskirts of a Pereira.  The hotel is a lovely place with all the eating areas open to the outdoors.  A sloping lawn with brick paths is edged with thick plantings of tropical plants like gardenias, lantanas, cycads, palms and heliconias.  The place is constructed using the local bamboo as support beams.  Every morning they put out bananas for the birds which include saffron finches, scarlet flycatchers, and blue grey tanangers.

Hotel Sazagua hot tub

We arrived by plane from Bogota on Friday afternoon and gradually met a few of the 11 people on our trip.  The whole group met at 8:30 am Saturday morning, prepared for hiking.  We took a small bus to the Hacienda Venecia coffee plantation near Manizales and hiked about 4 miles down a dirt road and around the property.  The plantation has places to stay and beautiful grounds.  They offer both coffee and cacao tours.  After lunch on the gazebo about half the group opted for a hike up to an overlook while the rest of us went on a coffee tour.  In Colombia most coffee is grown in sun on steep hillsides.  Apparently they don’t do shade grown coffee because there is enough shade provided by cloud cover.  This means though that the beans do not ripen all at once and must be picked almost year round, although there are two peak times for picking in spring and fall.  All the beans are hand-picked and the pickers are paid by the kilo. Often now the pickers are from Venezuela.  This Hacienda offered housing for its workers but I don’t think they all do.  This one was also large at 200 ha.  The average size of coffee farms is more like 20 ha.    They process their beans on site and roast a small amount.  Most is exported as green beans to Japan.  Colombian coffee is known for its fine flavor but tends to be a lighter roast here in Colombia.

View over Hacienda Venecia

cacao fruit

bamboo construction

From fruit to green coffee bean

A few years ago they started planting cacao trees as an experiment because the price of coffee had fallen due to increased production in Brazil.  They are at a high enough elevation that you might not expect cacao to grow there, but because of climate change it seems to be doing just fine.  They also grow bananas and papaya and small amounts of other fruits. 

Saturday night was the welcome dinner, a barbecue in the garden, complete with a 3 member band playing traditional Colombian music.  Our companions are mostly retired, although some only partially.  A mother and her senior in college daughter are on the trip too.  They are from the Boston area and are taking a trip to celebrate her graduation before she starts Teach for America.  4 people are from Denver and have had various interesting careers (including running an adventure camp for teens).  One woman lived much of her life in Italy working in the film industry.  Another couple is from California and he has taken up photography as a serious hobby.  Our guides are Nathalie and Neik (from the Netherlands).  Both are very sociable, organized, and fit and they have run the Colombia trip at least five times together.  Apparently organizing a trip in Colombia takes a great deal of patience!

Sunday’s trip was to Valle de Cocora National Park. The tall wax palm is the iconic tree of the park. Jake went on the longer, faster hike and I opted for the 6+ mile hike with a local guide more focused on natural and cultural history.  Our guide Luis is well-versed in medicinal plants and demonstrated the uses of various plants.  One leaf is heated and used as  a bandaid and antibiotic for instance.  We also got a good view of an Andean condor soaring over pastures!   Our hike mainly led through private property where cows and horses grazed and then along the edge of the woods.  The forest suffers from some incursions by pines imported from Canada and eucalyptus trees imported from Australia.  The local birds have been dispersing the seeds into the park from surrounding plantations.  The plantations are mainly used to produce paper.  Luis had been trained as a bioarchitect but seems not to have practiced long.   He owned a small farm near the Pacific coast that he was forced to sell for a low price due to FARC activity.  Now he lives near the park in a rented apartment leading guided tours.  He feels he successfully treated his stomach cancer last year using natural medicines from the Amazon.  He doesn’t feel confident enough in the government to make any sort of long-term investments like buying a house.  He is working with a group trying to reform visitation to the park.  It has seen a huge increase in tourism and there were thousands of people near the entrance going into the park on foot and horseback.  He said most Colombians simply visit the park because it was a setting for several tv shows and movies (including Narcos).  He would of course like to see more people using official guides so they learn something about the environment.  The park itself has one official employee and the farm at the entrance has several employees for visitor safety. The farm now charges 4000 pesos as an entrance fee since you have to cross their land to get into the park. 

Luis pointing out an orchid

wax palms

View over the Cocora Valley

Unknown flower

Looking into the moountains

Salento

When we got back to the parking area we took a Jeep Willy (3 people in front, 6 in back, and 3 standing up behind the jeep holding onto the roof) up to the town of Salento, about 20 minutes above the park entrance.  It’s a pretty little town with lots of tourist shops and restaurants.  The town was packed on Sunday with Colombians and other nationalities on holiday.