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After a couple more uneventful days in Medellin it was time to move on. We were heading south to the mountainous coffee region & hopefully finally the opportunity to bust out the jumpers again! There are 4 small towns in the coffee region & we hadn't really decided where we would stop but our end game was a ranch in the middle of nowhere, just outside a small town called Salento. After arriving at the bus station & discovering no buses only fairly expensive private cars, we picked the best of a dubious bunch and haggled our way to a $2 discount. Woo yeah! 20 minutes later we were squashed in the back of car being driven by presumably somebody trying to break the Colombian land speed record. We were missing the coaches!! The road/driver system on the mountainous roads resembles a giant game of chicken with multiple vehicles going in both directions constantly trying to overtake each other. Not our best journey. Enraged by the bus companies' price fixing tactics which resulted in massively overpriced bus tickets, we decided to push onto Salento and try to get there in the same day. With a big thunderstorm brewing overhead, after a 90 minute wait for a night bus which was rumored to pick up from the Armenia bus station, we were beginning to doubt our translation skills.. when the bus rolled into the station. Phew! When we eventually got to Salento at 1am we checked into the nearest hostel.
The following morning we awoke & set out for our intended destination, Serrana eco ranch, further into the hills.. We knew we had to walk 1.5km up a dirt track to get there and got chatting to a local guy to make sure we were going in the right direction and he offered us a lift! What a gent! We thanked him but said we were happy to walk since the sun was out and we could already see that the scenery was spectacular! The place was really beautiful & the people friendly… we could already tell this was a keeper!
We quickly made ourselves at home, signed ourselves up for some more (much needed!) Spanish lessons with a lovely local lady called Marcia and got wind of a fiesta going on that evening! We explored the town that evening to find some dinner and returned (with a box of wine - classy!) to join a fairly tame gathering. A few hours later everyone gathered around a bonfire with wine flowing it became a really cool night getting to know everyone staying. Its definitely the type of place you can get stuck for a while! We spent the next 5 days chilling, exploring, Spanishing & yes, of course hung overing, before we finally had to leave. Sad times... We grabbed a night bus back to Bogota where we had a night before the next adventure.........the Amazon! How exciting!
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