We Love Salento

 Lacey and I spend HOURS creating our itineraries for our trips. We view the pros and cons of different destinations. We make lists of the activities we most want to do. We figure out where we want to sleep.

Oftentimes our "travel days" look to be the most boring days on paper. We know we need to get from point A to point B and it will take most of a day and we just bite the bullet. This looked to be one of those days but ended up being so fun. 

We woke up early, ate some more of the delicious hotel breakfast, and ubered to the airport again. Uber in Bogota was great and we would highly recommend it. The airport was a little hectic. We fly budget airlines most of the time and this one seemed to have the method of "only check in people who are close to being late for their flight." A worker would call out the upcoming flight and ask if anyone was on it. Then move them to the front of the line basically. We got through with plenty of time. While waiting, we made friends we a couple who were also going to Salento.

The distance from Bogota to the Pereira/Salento area is not that far but due to traffic and mountains, it is a 10+ hour bus ride. Or it's a 50-minute flight. You know which way we went. 

Lacey books all of our hostels/hotels on our trips. This one was particularly interesting. We flew into Pereira which is about an hour away from our hostel. The head of the hostel emailed us the day before saying that his brother-in-law usually picks people up but some people at the hostel recently tested positive for Covid so a taxi would pick us up and we would be "glamping" instead of staying in a room. 

The taxi ride to the hostel was beautiful (SO GREEN!). At one point, the taxi turned off the main road and drove down a dirt road and then kept driving... We crossed a stone bridge and the hostel appeared. It was soooo cool. It's basically in the forest along a river. There are a few tents set up under bamboo roofs plus a very small, more classic "hotel room" type building. The head of the hostel told us that the tents are his that he bought in Alaska (he's American). He met his wife who is Colombian and moved there. His wife ended up dying during Covid from cancer (very sad). He lives at the hostel now with her family who all help run it. Anyway, we didn't even set our bags down and we heard his whole life story!

I cannot stress how cool the tent situation was. The bed was very comfy and it was such a fun experience the whole time we were there. There was a bathroom and shower just a few steps away from our tent area so not too bad. It was also nice because the roof extended past the tent so we had a lot of dry area when it rained to keep our stuff. 

You can see the map above. The red line and circle are where our hostel was. The main road to Salento is the squiggly line. The blue line/area is the Cocora Valley hike we did the next day and the Green line is the roads we hiked on during our last day in the area. For now, concentrate on the red and purple parts. 

Sooooo by the time we got into the tent and all setup, it was definitely lunchtime. It started to rain so we waited it out as long as possible before deciding on our next move. The hostel doesn't serve lunch so we walked down the dirt road to the main road (it was about a 15 min walk). 

In the town (it wasn't even a town, it was a couple roadside stands), there was a cool little restaurant. I got a fresh grilled trout with a plantain cracker. Lacey got the traditional Colombian meal of beans, rice, plantain, and beef. The fish with the cracker was sooooo good. Apparently, this area of Colombia is well known for its river trout. 

To get to the main town of Salento, we had to wait on the side of the road for a specific regional bus. Then we had to hop on the bus and pay like 20 cents to ride up the curvy road to the town. The bus was always full so we had to stand in the aisle for the 20-minute ride. 

The town of Salento is just like lots of our favorite towns all over the world. Small, quaint, historic. All the best things. The buildings are so cool. There were lots of tourists but they were all Colombian. With Covid still raging, international travel was not as popular. The hostel guy also said that Colombians are becoming more financially secure and are traveling within the country more than they used to. 

The main town square of Salento was hopping! The Christmas decorations were still up including palm trees with lights, food stands, music festivals, the whole thing. We had our first cup of Colombian coffee and it was pretty good! 

We hiked up to a lookout over the city and had some glamour shots taken lol. The stair climb reminded us of our training for the Inca Trail. As we hiked up and down, the sun started to go down. That's when the city really came to life. The food stalls started pouring out delicious smoke and the Christmas lights all turned on. We had a dinner of grilled meat from a stand (UGH WE LOVED IT). Lacey also got yummy empanadas from a stand. We ended the dinner with an obela (caramel and thin waffle thing). 

Taking the bus up to Salento was easy because the bus just ended there. Taking the bus down was a little more harrowing. We told the bus driver we needed to go to Boquia and he kept telling us to wait. As it turns out, they get the bus completely full of people going to Pereira or wherever else, then would let us on since we got off first. We stood in the aisle again. Here's the problem. We didn't know where our stop was so we told the people around us Boquia and they helped make sure the bus stopped for us. It was a little scary the first time! Later night bus rides were less stressful. 

We walked the last mile or so on the dirt road to our hostel and turned in for the night. What an incredible day! Days like this are exactly why we love international travel.