A Hike in the Andes; Wax Palms

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 tree indigenous to this area, and only to this area, called a wax palm.  They are amazing!  Non-tropical palms!  Who knew!  They are the tallest of all palms, and are the national tree of Colombia.  They are quite beautiful:

Our hike was a few hundred feet of elevation and about a mile long.  It was not easy; some of our group, including Joyce, chose not to do it.

We then had lunch in a restaurant in the Valley.  There are rainbow trout in all the rivers and streams here, and fresh trout is almost always on the menu.  Today, mine was grilled and served on a giant plantain chip:

After lunch we broke into groups and planted new wax palm trees from seedlings.  Here’s Joyce’s group:

Finally, we went to a coffee shop to (finally) taste the finest of Colombian coffee.  Again we had the lecture that medium roast is the only proper way, and that it is simply wrong to ruin good coffee (whose natural sweetness can be tasted) with sugar or milk.  The barista gave a demonstration of making latte and cappuccino, and we had coffee.  It was good.  Vey good.  But as good as all the hype?  Not to me.

An interesting finding here in Salento was this hostel and restaurant.  The flag out front said much about who the clientele are likely to be.