The Blaus - South America and Europe

22 de Junio - Salento, Zona Cafetera, Colombia

Salento is a small, sleepy town nestled in the foothills of the Andes mountains in the coffee growing region of Colombia. This town gives you the feeling of being in the heartland of Colombia (Juan Valdez land)...it is absolutely picturesque and quaint. There are vaqueros (cowboys) dressed in ponchos and donning straw hats, horses gallop through the streets, and the locals are warm and friendly. Here you find all the charms of a farming village where everyone knows their neighbors. Anytime someone enters a restaurant, bar or public bus, they greet everyone in the place with a warm ¨Buenas¨ short for Buenas Dias and all the ladies call eachother ¨Mami¨ short for Mamita. The streets are lined with colorful buildings and in the center of town there is a plaza surrounded by outdoor eateries and a big white church with a towering steeple and clock tower. The town is alive with the bustle of Colombian tourists on the weekends. Traditional Colombian folk music floating out through the windows and doors of dimly lit bars provides the soundtrack for the activity at night.

To get a better view of the town and surrounding mountains, we walked up the hill to a mirador where we could see the green mountains on the opposite side of Cocora Valley. The rolling hills are covered with green grass for grazing, and everything is so lush that it appears to be covered in felt from this distance. At the top of this hill there is a playground for kids, and people gather here in the evenings to watch the sunset as they sit around in a circle and chat. We sat on swings overlooking the expanse of hills that turn into mountains whose tops are eternally covered in clouds. The mountains look dreamlike, as if someone had taken a sheet of emerald green velvet and pushed the ends toward the center bunching the fabric together, creating soft folds and creases in the otherwise smooth and soft material. Under the light of the setting sun, the green hills glimmered with golden highlights and purple shadows. In the trees below there were exotic birds flying from branch to branch and singing. As we sat on the swings and tried to memorize these incredible images (we knew that no photos would do this justice), we noticed a soldier dressed in camouflage out of the corner of our eye. He was approaching from a bush covered trail nearby. He was carrying a gun and didn´t look like other Colombian police officers that we had seen in bigger cities. For a moment our hearts stopped as we wondered if these men dressed in camo toting heavy artillery might be guerillas. We hushed our voices and decided to pretend we were from Canada if asked. Two soldiers passed in front of us and we quietly observed that none of the Colombians in the park were panicking in their presence. In fact, one of the soldiers was leaning down to pet a woman´s puppy and other soldiers were having pleasant exchanges with locals on the hill. So, when another group of soldiers passed in front of us, we mustered up the courage to greet them and ask if we could take a photo of them. Up close they looked like kids and they seemed friendly. They happily agreed to pose for a picture and asked where we were from. We gave eachother knowing looks and told the truth and they didn´t even turn their guns on us. One of the soldiers said, ¨Bring back Clinton!¨ With that they went off to patrol the mountains outside of Salento. Apparently Clinton has a fan club here in Colombia, as we noticed that he was just in Bogota a few days ago for a speaking engagement. It was good to see pictures of him on TV walking down the streets of Bogota freely. When Bush came a few years ago, he brought 15,000 troops and the people of Cartagena were not allowed in the streets during his brief stay. After our interaction with the soldiers we sat in our swings basking in the glow of that exchange and wondered again how Colombia got such a horrible reputation, because as we are discovering first hand, even the men who should be threatening have gone out of their way to be nice.

In Salento we stayed at a place called Posada del Cafe, which is the most charming little inn in town. Our hosts were Señora Maria Elena, her lady-in-waiting Alba Maria, and a yellow lab named Addie. We were their only guests, so we got special treatment. When we arrived, the Señora sat us down, brought us glasses of mora (blackberry) juice, and helped us plan our days in Salento. She lived in Virginia for a few years, so she speaks great English. The inn is built around a garden where flowers, strawberries, blackberries, herbs and lulo trees abound. Lulo is a fruit that looks like a kiwi, but the juice tastes like apple cider. Every afternoon our señora brought us a cup of tinto (coffee) to drink while we relaxed on the veranda with Addie and watched the most colorful birds come to feed on the fruit that Maria Elena left out for them. The decor and construction of the inn is that of a U-shaped ranch house with open-air verandas, wooden floors, and brightly painted accents (turqoise and yellow). Our room had double doors with windows in each door that opened up to the street outside where we would occasionally hear the clip clop of horses trotting by.

On our first night in Salento, Maria Elena recommended a restaurant for dinner, so we walked there and were immediately in awe of its location on the hilltop overlooking the valley. We ate trucha (trout) prepared Salento style, baked whole and served in a bubbing hot skillet with cream sauce, mushrooms, and shrimp accompanied with patacones (a fried plantain cracker). The ambience of this place was so romantic and we were the only customers, so we had this beautiful dining room all to ourselves. We were intently looking out the window at the valley below as it began to grow dark outside and Billy spotted fireflies (luciernagas) flashing and glowing in the shadows of the trees in the distance. Jen had never seen fireflies before and they impressed her with their random twinkling green lights. They looked like flying embers shooting from the center of a hot fire or shooting stars in the night sky. We walked back to our hostel by the light of the moon and felt the travel gods smiling upon us. It was a very special day in the heart of Colombian Zona Cafetera.

The next day we hiked to Acaime Reserve in Cocora Valley. There were enough trails to spend two days exploring, but we didn´t have time to see everything. We started our day at 7am with an hour long willy (jeep) ride into the valley, which dropped us off at the trailhead. The highlight of the hikes in Acaime is a waterfall called Estrella de Agua, but we settled on hiking to a closer mirador and from there we could see the waterfall in the nearby mountains. The trail started in the valley, which is home to hundreds of tall wax palm trees (Colombia´s national tree) and later the trail ascended into cloud forest, where it was misty and constantly rained lightly. The trail was muddy and the air was damp and cool...perfect conditions for hiking. The path followed the rushing Quindio River most of the way. We stopped at the ranger station and talked with a couple that lives in the reserve about politics, coca growing, the increase of extranjeros (foreign travelers) in recent years, the decrease of problems that the country was plagued with 3 years ago. We drank agua de panela (hot water, raw sugar and lime) and watched hummingbirds come by the dozen to feed on sugar water that had been left out in bowls and feeders for them. We were given a tour of the accomodations offered to students of flora and fauna and travelers. Had we known better, we would´ve stayed in Acaime for one night and hiked around for two days in order to see more. We finished our hike at around 2pm and had lunch at a small restaurant near the trailhead.

The next jeep wasn´t scheduled to depart for Salento for another 2 hours, so we decided to walk back to town instead of waiting for a ride. We got halfway to Salento in an hour, and just before the road began an uphill climb, we were offered a ride in the back of a truck by some friendly cowboys. It was a bumpy ride, but we were so happy to get back to town that much quicker. As we bounced around in the back of the truck, we watched the green hills pass by and enjoyed the company of those cowboys.

The following day we went to the Mariposaria (butterfly preserve and botanical gardens) in Kalarca. It was amazing to see so many different kinds of butterflies in various shapes and sizes fluttering around a beautiful enclosed botanical garden. This botanical garden was inside of a greenhouse that was shaped like a butterfly. The surrounding grounds were impressive as well. There was a building devoted to insects, with ant farms, bee hives and a large collection of dried insects on display. We skipped the tour because we wanted to avoid the crowd and go at our own pace, but we befriended a security guard (Christian) who took us on our own private tour of the butterfly exhibit. He showed us how to get a butterfly to land on our finger by dipping our fingers in juice from oranges that are left out as food for them. We got an upclose look at these mythical creatures as they sat on our fingers and used their tickling tongues to lap up the juice.

Afterwards we went to lunch in downtown Armenia, where two boys were performing for the customers in a traditional Colombian restaurant. We invited them to sit with us and they eagerly played the only American song they knew (Nothing Else Matters by Metallica). We asked if they were vaqueros because they were dressed in cowboy hats and ponchos, and Camilo and Leandro proudly replied that they were ¨campocheenos¨. The guitar player (Camilo) was such a charmer, the right personality for show business. He wanted us to guess his age as Leandro flashed 13 fingers behind his friend´s back. He was so surprised when we guessed correctly, his eyes were as wide as saucers. Both boys were extremely talented musicians. They sang traditional Colombian songs, one of which was very sad. The lyrics were about war, people dying, and violence in the pueblo. They sang with sweet voices, and we were not the least bit embarrassed when we alone clapped enthusiastically for them as if we were proud parents.

Back at our hostel, we spent a lot of time talking with Maria Elena about Colombia. She told us that she remembers her father talking about the leftist organizations and their ideas when she was a child. Fifty years ago they may have had more honorable political intentions, but today the guerilla organizations (FARC and ELN) have been reduced to living in the mountains in hiding, terrorizing citizens with random kidnappings, and forcing farmers to give them money in order to finance their operations. It seems very counterintuitive that a leftist organization steals from and victimizes the poorest of Colombia´s people like the farmers. We wondered how the current situation has become so bleak.

Colombia has been a country in turmoil since its inception (post independence from Spain). There has always been conflict between centralizing pro-clerical Conservatives and federalizing anti-clerical Liberals. Civil wars including The War of the Thousand Days in 1899 when 100,000 people were killed have been the norm. La Violencia was another civil war from 1948-1957 during which time 300,000 people were killed. This war was followed by 16 years of peace when both parties declared a truce, supported the same candidate, and evenly divided all political offices between them. During the 1980s the conservative president offered amnesty to the guerilla movements, but only FARC upheld the agreement and in the next election when the Liberal party took the majority, right-wing groups revolted and killed over 1,000 party members and assassinated two presidential candidates. In the 1990s under Liberal goverments there was the capture or surrender of most of the leading Cali drug lords, but the US decertified Colombia from its list of countries making progress against drugs trafficking, so without US aid for the establishment of alternative crops many communities had no means of support. In the late 1990s the US withdrew decertification restrictions and in 1998 the president (Pastrana) negotiated with FARC and conceded a demilitarized zone in Caqueta. ELN then demanded similar treatment and stepped up its campaign. Pastrana devised Plan Colombia to combat the drugs trade and the US gave $1.6 billion for the cause, which bought military and anti-narcotics equipment and funded crop substitution. Spraying coca crops has not been effective, as it has given rise to the production of opium poppies instead. Both left-wing guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries are involved in the drugs trade. Paramilitary groups like AUC are waging their own war against FARC and ELN. The current president in 2002 (Alvaro Uribe Velez) ruled with anti-guerilla policies and introduced new anti-terrorism laws, but violence continued through 2004. In April 2004 AUC agreed to disarm and restrict itself to a small area of the Cordoba province. Colombians seem to have a positive attitude about the current president. The number of kidnappings has dropped significantly in the past year, and tourism is on the rise.

With a history of turmoil and violence by insurgents the people seem to live in a constant state of fear despite the evidence that it is becoming safer here. Maria Elena told us the Colombians are la gente sana, and when we looked up the word sana, we found that it means recovering. She says that she hopes future generations will live in peace. She tells us that Salento is completely safe and that nothing ever happens in her sleepy town, but she lowers her voice to a whisper when she talks about FARC. She tells us that they are on the run in the mountains miles away from Salento, but then she puts her index finger beneath her eye to show us that they are always watching.

We now understand why Colombians are so religious, because for generations they have lived in fear this way. They haven´t been able to turn to their government or to the police for protection, so their options are either to join forces with a paramilitary group to fight against the guerillas or to pray to God for their safety.

posted by The Blaus @ 9:22 PM