Colombia January-February, 2018

January 31, 2018  Orchids We left Salento for Manizales, and the road was good.  They have a fun way of identifying rest stops—they do so with giant coffee mugs: We stopped at one for a cappuccino: We began our learning today with a visit to a completely demolished hacienda.  One of the most important drug lords and a founder of the Medellin cartel, Carlos Lehder Rivas, had a huge compound with multiple buildings on a hilltop in the countryside.  We stopped there and heard, on site, the story of his remarkable reign, with a huge home, multiple outbuildings, lavish parties (Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones played there for private parties twice) and his ultimate capture and extradition to the USA where he was convicted and is currently in prison.  The buildings are all in ruin because there had been giant stores of cash hidden in the walls of the buildings, and the buildings have been torn apart looking for money. From there we drove...

January 30, 2018  A Hike In the Andes; Wax palms This morning we had a formal lecture on the history of violence in Colombia.  Although I had heard bits and pieces of the story, the whole narrative was chilling.  Our instructor was a man whose family had personally suffered, but not as badly as his wife’s, which lost his wife’s father and two of her brothers to kidnapping and failure to return them even after a ransom was paid.  The Colombian renaissance is underway, and people are quite pleased, but the problems are not totally gone, and violence in Colombia is in the newspaper just today.  It was an eye-popping hour and a half. Following the lecture we got into jeeps and rode (some of us standing in the back for the whole ride) up and up to Cocora Valley which is at 7900 feet elevation.  On the way we passed avocado farms, which, for economic reasons (low farming costs) are replacing some coffee plantations: There is a palm tre...

January 29, 2018  Juan Valdez in Armenia The Andes make a triple range, running north-south, in central Colombia, and we’ve been on the eastern range in Bogota.  This morning we arose at 3:45 AM to make a 6:30 AM flight from Bogota to Armenia which is on the western of the three ranges.  The flight was 25 minutes but saved a full day of driving up and down over narrow two-lane roads. Why is this city named Armenia in a Spanish-speaking country?  The name was changed to Armenia in honor of those killed in the genocide by the Turks of the early 1920s.  Armenia is the regional capital and the center of coffee production in this part of Colombia.  Today we learned more about coffee growing, harvesting, drying, roasting, and selling than….  Well, you know.  I do have a far greater understanding of the need for fair-trade coffee after being here. We visited a coffee plantation, where the story of the lives of the plantation workers was exp...

Sunday, January 28, 2018  Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá is one of only two such cathedrals in the world, the other being in Poland (which we visited in 2012).  It’s about an hour and 20 minutes out of Bogota, and we drove there this morning.  On the way we passed this billboard: I’ll need to research if there’s any connection to our Rochester.edu.  The salt cathedral is a huge series of rooms built in an old salt mine, one part of which is still in use.  There is a walk, gradually down, with 14 large cavernous rooms, each representing a station of the cross, and each with a unique presentation of a salt cross.  Here are three of the 14: You approach the cathedral proper from above in the rear, and come across a statue of the Angel Gabriel watching over: Here’s a photo of the cathedral proper taken from the choir loft.  For  scale, note the people on the floor below: One ...

Bogota  Saturday, 2018.01.27 Our trip to Bogota yesterday was uneventful, although we were unable to visit Joyce’s brother Bruce and his wife Leslie before leaving, as all the northbound roads out of Miami were gridlocked for hours due to a dump truck rollover on I-95 North which completely closed that road.  Colombian customs and immigration were very slow, and we arrived at our hotel and got to bed about 12:30 AM this morning.  Up at 6:30 for an 8:00 start with our Road Scholar group, who seem to be a lovely mix from all over the USA (and one couple from Canada).  We had an introductory talk about Colombia and Bogota, with promises of lots more to come.  We are at 8600 feet elevation, and the weather (just 300 miles from the equator) is lovely.  Morning chill in the 50s and intense sunny days in the 70s.  Truly lovely. After preliminaries and introductions, we left for the astonishing Paloquemao Market, a truly enormous market for food ...