(NB- not my photo but having trouble adding one at the mo)

I have a week's worth of blog to catch up on- again! I write this whilst lying in a hammock outside my cabana in the 'Desierto de la Tatacoa'- using a computer in a place where there is no electricity is kind of strange but the battery is fully charged and it's a good opportunity to catch up whilst enjoying the tranquillity of this place :-)

For now though I need to catch up on SALENTO where I spent a few days in the zona cafetera, the coffee region. I travelled there on Monday 24th Oct. It ended up being a full 12 hour travel day! The hotel owner had phoned to reserve me a place on the 8.30 bus from Andes so I was up at 6.30 to go and get a 'collectivo' bus to Andes from Jardin. On arrival there the lady told me the bus had been cancelled and the next one was at 10.30. Annoyingly I needn't have got up so early! Anyway, I bought a ticket then went to an internet café to pass the time- the first I have been to since I usually don't need to. The bus was full and the bus was hot! Very hot! There was a lunch stop and also the police stopped it once for one of their random checks- they took everyone's ID cards to check, though didn't even look at my passport. I wonder what these checks are for- have also seen them at bus stations, checking random people. I stayed on the bus til Armenia though in hindsight I should maybe have got off in Pereira or asked to be dropped off by the road that goes to Salento as I ended up having to back track. Was probably about 5.15 when we got to Armenia then bus to Salento and arrived at about 7pm. I felt pretty tired, travelling takes it out of you even if you aren't doing much other than sitting on the bus! There were two German girls, Jen and Elena, who had also just arrived so I walked with them to the supermarket. Someone they knew had also arrived today and she had travelled with a couple of other travellers so in the evening they were talking about doing the walk into the Valle de Cocora on Tuesday. I had read all about it and it sounded great, just wasn't sure my level of fitness would cope with it! I made enquiries at the hostel and decided that I'd go with the possibility of turning back if it got too hard.

So Tuesday was the walk into the Valle de Cocora with a really good group of people from the hostel (See entry on Valle de Cocora which I will add soon!) which left me with lots of aches and pains on Wednesday! Everything seemed to ache but particularly my knee where I had hit it on a tree during the walk :-(

Wednesday- Plantation House (the hostel) owns a coffee finca and we all went on a tour. As the English speaking owners are on holiday at the mo the tour was just in Spanish so I had a translating role since some of our group don't have much Spanish! The tour was really interesting and we found out all about the coffee growing and harvesting process. I am going to try to give some of the info here, though it's possible I might not remember it all 100% correctly!

Coffee bean picking is done twice a year in April, May, June and September, October, November. When the flowers start to grow on the coffee trees they know the fruit will be ready in 3 months. The 'fruit' is ready when it is red as this means it is ripe. They go into a hand-operated machine which strips off the outer shell (the red bit) and separates that from the beans. The beans then get put in to water and here the good stuff sinks to the bottom and the ones they won't use float on the top. Once washed and only coffee beans are left they are dried out, here they were in a kind of green house. Once dry they can be rubbed together to get rid of the outer layer, but nowadays a machine does this, before they are then roasted and ground, before being packaged. At this coffee plantation they deal with the process up til the drying and then they are sent to another business which has machines for the rest. They showed us though how the process can also be done at home- roasting the beans on the stove, then grinding them before making the coffee- we then all got a cup of coffee. I had a few sips of mine but not being a coffee fan I wasn't that keen- apparently it was really good coffee though! We then went to find out more about the coffee trees and discovered they grow 4 types of coffee there. A tree is grown from a coffee bean, well, seed which is planted in sand. In 3 months it grows about 2 inches, after 4 months it starts to grow leaves. Then it is transferred to a soil pot. Here it will grow for about 5 months before it is planted properly. It will take about 4 years to grow to full size and the tree will produce coffee for around 20 years. He also explained how insecticides used to be used for the weeds etc around the coffee plantation but this killed off the weeds which kept all the insects happy. Now to prevent insects on the coffee trees they make their own natural mix. They also grow various fruits at the finca and bamboo.

In the afternoon we all went for lunch at "Super patacones con trucha" which is what we all had- huge patacones (made from plantain) with trout. Afterwards I wandered in town with one of the girls, Despina, and had a look in the little shops. Jen, Elena and Despina were all getting a night bus to Bogotá so after they had left I started considering my plans for the next day- I intended my next stop to be Cali, but Tom (one of the group who went to the Valle de Cocora) had recommended a place called "Desierto de la Tatacoa" which was where he'd been before Salento. I started looking into it a bit and decided I might go there as it sounded good! I ended up staying another day in Salento so I could look into it properly and also had another chat with Tom about it. Had super patacones again for lunch with Andy but otherwise didn't do that much- it was a nice restful day before another travel day and also I was still aching from the walk!