COLOMBIA • SALENTO

During day time, if you drive through the village, you will enter a single lined road that goes down the mountain and into the Cocora Valley. Here you’ll see several jeeps filled with so many people, some of them will be hanging off the car, and again, while they were all chill about it, I was not. You’d see many private cars used like a mini bus, there was of course normal busses as well, but why wait for those. As I’d come to acceptance of how casually the locals dangerously got around, my focus was shifted to the green mountain hills, entirely covered by little coffee trees. I was amazed how the mountains looked decorated in patterns. The fog rolled down the mountains and revealed exactly how high up the trees covered the mountain before thick forest would cover the rest. We arrived at a little site with few houses. A few restaurants, coffee shops and a stall where you could rent horses to climb over the Cocora Valley. The stall had all kinds of trips that lasted for various hours. If you arrived early enough, you could ride a horse across a narrow mountain path for about 4 hours one way which would take you to a valley filled with thousands of non shy hummingbirds. I was loosing it. We never made the trip because the rain was so strong during the morning hours, we were scared the horses would slip off the path. So instead we just chilled in the Cocora Valley, enjoyed the ridiculously tall palm trees, cuddled with some horses and had Colombian coffee, which blew my mind by its delicious smooth taste. I don’t even like coffee, but I was sold for this one.

On our final morning in Salento, Sebas and Alejandra said they were going to give us a surprise. Milton kept giving me this smirky smile as if he already knew what it was, and I was twisting with anticipation of what it could be. We grabbed our cameras and packed a bag with towels, mosquito spray and water and started walking. We left the hostel site and came to a large river, which we followed through thick jungle, till we came to open grass fields. The path took us past an aloe vera plantation, thousands of yellow flowers stood up from the ground, each representing one aloe vera. It smelled like paradise. We arrived at a beautiful little farm, covered in primary colours of yellow red and blue, and some orange. There were cows and dogs walking around as they pleased. We had to pay a entry price of 3000 pesos to pass and continued to walk through little openings in the jungle where suddenly the air got drastically cooler.

Upon us was a natural tunnel, it looked almost fragile with all the vegetation growing and hanging off it. The air was incredibly fresh and cool, and the smell it self was so fresh and so energising, I can’t quite think anything I’ve smelled like that before. We had to pass another little river, before we came to the camp site of a paisa; a nickname often used for people from Medellín, however further north it is the name you carry when you are a farmer in the Colombian mountains. Now, obviously there are a lot of Colombian mountain farmers, but this type of farmer is more O.G., as he would wear cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, there’ll be a straw in his mouth when he’s not chewing tobacco, and a huge machete knife on the side of his thigh. This one greeted us with warm creamy black coffee, and would gladly pose for a photo. He then cracked into a deep laughter when he realised Milton took 5 photos instead of just one. 

We thanked him for his hospitality, continued into the jungle, and just around the corner of a stone hill was a waterfall with thousands of litres of ice cold water, which gracefully shaped itself into the river we had been following. The waterfall was like a little oasis in the jungle, so perfectly framed by the thick trunks of the tall trees surrounding it, with vines and large nest like floral plants hanging down from the trees. I was so incredibly happy we had found our way out there even thought the water which appeared so delicious was a complete deceiving illusion as it turned out to be cold enough to make your whole body numb. I knew that if I simply accepted this and tried to relax, my body would eventually get used to the cold and not feel it anymore. I was right, it was, needless to say, rather painful to enter the water, and after reminding myself that ‘I’M NORWEGIAN I CAN DO THIS’, I was able to enjoy the natural pool. I had been needing this for a very long time. 

See more from Salento HERE