Day 34 - Salento (Shoulda turned back 2 hours ago)

I can't believe it's Friday already. I haven't done much as I promised myself I would.. Yet, I feel almost guilty for not doing much, lol.. It's pretty unbelievable that time is FLYING by as I do nothing, but every day has been a good day. I don't think I mentioned this before, but I haven't done a lot of drinking, I am trying to bring my tolerance back to reasonable!

What's ironic about this town is that it is set in Zona Cafetera, Coffee Zone, and I don't drink a lick of coffee.. not a lick, lol! Yet, I decided I wanted to do a coffee tour. I went with a couple from Australia who also do not speak Spanish and we ventured off. On our way, look what/who we ran into, lol. They were purdee, yet I cringed when I saw them as I reminisced to days of milking..

Soo we walk downhill for about 45 minutes, taking in the sights. It is muy bonito (very pretty) out here, but HOOT. We have the option between two coffee tours and so we randomly chose this organic coffee farm El Ocaso. It's pretty and smells like coffee, which can be good or bad depending on if you drink coffee. We explained to our guide we spoke very little Spanish and so he spoke much slower and tried to use words we were familiar with or repeated them and used hand gestures to make sure we were getting the gitz of it.

 

Can't touch this.. 

 

This was our guide

The beans, good and not so good..hidden racism possibly?

I thought this gadget was the coolest thing. I suppose they used this back in the day to separate the pod/skin from the beans. Look at me hard at work shucking the coffee beans.

I also thought this was pretty darn cool.. It's a homemade coffee pot. They added the ground coffee in this baggie thing, added hot water in it and PRESTO, coffee.

So we leave the tour in search of this alternative path that some backpackers told us about. They said it would take us to the next town, we could grab lunch, and take a bus back to Salento. About 75 minutes later, we find ourselves praying for the next paved major road. We had walked and sweated, and walked and sweated, and yet, we continued to climb hills to no where. You know 2 hours passed and we know we've made a wrong turn somewhere, but we figured we keep going straight because what is behind us is really worst than what can be ahead of us.

Then all of a sudden, we saw a couple of trucks from far off. I thought for a second it was a mirage and I was suffering, but the sound of passing vehicles is REAL. I've never been soo excited. 

Well come to find out, we ended up in a whole nutha nutha city Los Pinos. It's a city soo far out that when we finally were able to get a bus, it took us about 30 minutes of the bus exceeding the speed limits to get back to town. Let's put this in perspective.. it was like we were in New York and walked to the Jersey Border.. well maybe not that far, but that's what it felt like and that's what I felt and smelled like. Oh well!

I did my volunteer shift, ordered a fabulous pizza that I failed to take a picture of and went to sleep, missing the darn bon fire. Oh well.. there's always tomorrows festivities.  I am going to try and play Tejo tomorrow.. it's throwing horseshoes at some gunpowder or something. It's like the Colombian version of bags/corn hole.