Coffe Zone pt.2 and Pacific Region

Before heading more to the south we decided to stay a bit more at Aguadas town, first for the perfect hospitality of David and Natalia couple who by the chance are couchsurfers and invited us to stay at their farm and secondly because this week was the holy week of the catholic easter and everywhere else would be hard to find accommodation. During that time another guy couchsurfed at the house, from Russia who was traveling by bicycle from Mexico down to Patagonia with his friend, who apparently met a girl at Mexico and decided to stay there to marry her…
During our stay there we also visited some ancient petroglyphs, carved stoned from ancient indigenous habitants.
Our next stop (during holy week) was the city of Salamina, also a colonial small town in the Andes, with a very impressive central church. Initially was hard to find accommodation and we almost slept at firemans station beds. We watched the whole ceremony of the catholic easter in which they participated from school kids to the mayor in a big two day parade.
After the holy week we head to Manizales, the capital city of caldas region (the coffee zone region) which was also our access point to Los Nevados natural park. We hiked in order to reach the height of almost 5000 meters above sea level, where ice and glaciers could be seen and a perfect view of the nearby active volcano and it’s vapors and fumes. A very interesting thing in this hike was that it was clear to observe the change of plantation along the different heights, from dense forest at low, then shorter plantation and finally bold volcanic rock with lakes of sulfuric water around.
Final stop at Caldas region was Salento with the famous national park Valle de Cocora. Hiking at this park one pass from the valley with the highest wax trees and rivers, then cross a jungle area and end up to the cloud forest. The night we played at Salento the tejo game (the colombian traditional game that we first saw and described at Bogota part) with other travelers at los amigos bar.
Leaving this place and before reaching Cali, we decided to make a small deviation in order to visit a small village of the Pacific side named San Cipriano. The deviation point town is called Buga and it was a very nice surprise away from the gringo trail. In many colombian towns i tend to say that it has the most friendly people i have seen until the next town and the same happened in Buga.
We are now finally to San Cipriano, a town that belongs to the pacific coast region, one with the most rainfall per year. This town is the most unique in the country. Firstly in order to get there you don’t use car or bus, but just a homemade wooden platform motorized by a motorcycle and moving along a rail line all through a dense jungle. This part of Colombia reminds a lot Africa, for it’s climate, the jungle, the houses and also the habitants who are mostly afro-colombians. It’s a perfect place to relax, walk in the jungle during the day, find the hidden waterfalls, swim at their crystal clear water during the rain and when the night comes to sit on the garden of the nice and hospitable hostel marinos cabin and enjoy the jungle night sounds. We think that we might stay here for a while and then go to Buga and Cali in order to return to Bogota to catch our flight to Leticia, the capital of colombian Amazonas region.

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