Venturer's Log: Salento II
Salento, sunrise, and the Valle de Cocora
Salento is an absolutely gorgeous colonial town in the middle of the coffee region of Colombia, but it's more than just pretty facades and coffee farms. Salento is also the gateway for the Valle de Cocora which is actually part of the Los Nevados National Park. People are often encouraged to come to Salento to acclimatise before moving on to Los Nevados, but we didn't head up into the mountains further and contented ourselves with hiking the valle.
To Nick's huge enthusiasm, I wanted to make the journey to the valley earlier in the morning to avoid the crowds that typically descend on the valley from about 9-10am onwards. Additionally, I thought it would be a good idea to visit the mirador de Salento even earlier that same day so we could watch the sunrise over the mountain.
Oh yes dear reader. I wanted us to wake up at 5am so we could walk 30 minutes to a viewpoint, before heading to the valley do to a 6 hour hike.
As you can imagine, Nick was thrilled with this idea and was completely up for it. As I've previously mentioned, he loves waking up early in the morning.
To clarify, I am joking.
Nevertheless, he was a trooper and a half. He woke up early and begrudgingly hauled himself out of bed and out the door to ensure we would arrive at the mirador with plenty of time before sunrise.
Google told us that sunrise was due at 6:15am. We were there by 6am.
I know, he's a hero.
Especially when we realised that sunrise at 6:15am probably didn't take the mountains into account. Which meant that we waited until at least 6:30 before the sun started to peak over the mountains... So we were there for 30 extra minutes before sunrise even began, which meant that it could have been an extra 30 minutes in bed.
I'd like to say that it was worth it, but honestly the viewpoint was fine and most of the sunrise was obscured by trees and clouds. Pretty? Yes. Worth it? Probably not.
Valle de Cocora
The journey to Cocora
My idea to see the sunrise worked in tandem with my plan to hike Valle de Cocora, specifically because I thought that if we were already going to be up early to go to the hike then we might as well get up earlier to see the sunrise.
It was probably about 7am-ish when we headed back into town from the mirador, and we had some quick breakfast, purchased some lunch to take with us, and headed into the plaza. We purchased our return jeep tickets out to the valley and were on our way.
The jeeps comfortably fit 6 people inside the back, and 2 passengers up the front with the driver. There is also space for 3 people to stand on the back of the jeep and cling to it while it drives along the road.
Guess where we got to go?
Mother, before you start freaking out, we were fine. No we weren't provided helmets, or seatbelts, or anything to clip us on. Rest assured, we are still alive. No, I don't think it would have been covered by our travel insurance. We held on tight.
It was actually rather thrilling, holding onto a thin rail as we bounced along the (thankfully) paved road. We had a wonderful view of the valley as we drove through it, and at one point we had to pause while a herd of cattle crossed the road in front of us and came right up alongside the jeep.
Entrance fees
Eventually we arrived in Cocora, a small town where the hiking trail begins. My arms were soooo tired and I climbed wearily down from the jeep, not quite sure if I was ready to begin a hike after already being awake for sunrise and then clinging onto the jeep for 30 minutes. But, we found the blue gate where the trail begins and bravely headed through.
We were briefly stopped by a woman at the entrance who explained to us that we would need to pay for entry into the valley a little further down the way.
"How much?" we asked.
"26k COP per person" she said. (That's about £5).
I checked the wallet.
We had 28k total.
"Well shit," I said to Nick.
"Fuck it," I said. "Let's give it a go and see what happens."
"Fine," he said, unconvinced.
20 minutes later we came to the entry point where we it was once again explained that it would be 26k COP each. 6k here, and 20k later.
Oh dear.
We resolved to head back to the jeeps where Nick would go back to Salento, head back to the hotel to collect more of our cash, then come back out while I waited for him in town. Initially he said that I should just go on without him but I refused this idea as I wanted to do the hike with him.
We turned around and headed back to Corcora.
On the way, we saw two guys who were heading the way we had just come from.
"Do you speak English?" I asked.
"Yes" they said.
I explained the situation and, embarrassed, asked if we could borrow 26k from them. Unbelievably kindly, without hesitation they immediately got out their wallet. I promised I would be able to pay them when we got back to Salento, and took one of their phone numbers so we could stay in contact.
Then, humbled and grateful, we went back to the checkpoint, paid our 6k entrance and headed into the valley.
The hike
By this point it was probably about 9am and I was eager to get on our way. Nick is the photographer of the two of us and he had already taken out his camera to take some snaps along the way, including a few of a moth that hovered around us, as well as of a cow that was smack bang in the middle of our path (although thankfully moved fairly quickly).
The gravel path quickly gave way to a dirt track and we followed the river for quite some time up the hill through tropical Andean forest, crossing 5 or 6 different rope bridges (which I know my mum would have absolutely loved). At some point along the track there was a sign that pointed down to a waterfall, which we could hear but not see from the path. We weren't keen for a huge detour but I checked the map I had downloaded from maps.me and saw that the waterfall wasn't too far, so we headed down to see it. Nick had thankfully brought his tripod this time (he learned well from when he forgot it in Minca) so he set it up to take some shots of the falls.
While we were there a few other people also meandered down the path which made me start to think that more and more jeeps were bringing people in from Salento, and I didn't want the trail to start getting bogged down with other hikers so we left shortly after that. As we were coming back to the main track we saw some girls who were looking down as if they weren't sure if it was worth it. I told them it wasn't far and they headed the way we had just came - which meant that the track we wanted was free for us without others in the way.
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| Setting up the tripod |
Eventually the path started to climb. And climb. Up and up and up.
I am of the belief that there are two types of hikers:
- The walker who plods along, slow and steady, one foot in front of the other at the same consistent speed, allowing them to take their time, breathing slowly and steadily the entire way without the need to take extended pauses to catch their breath.
- The walker who has short sustained bursts of power, walking speedily past everyone in their way, before stopping every 50 metres or so to gasp in some air, before repeating the process. Almost like a HIIT exercise I suppose.
I am the first type of walker. Nick is the second.
Every so often he would rush past me up the hill, before pausing and inhaling sharp breaths. I would come up, say something like "I can't stop otherwise I won't gain momentum again," and stomp past, just for him to dash past me again 30 seconds later. At one point though, I trudged past him and... didn't see him again. I could hear him breathing back down the hill though, so I figured I would stop and wait for him, because I'm an excellent girlfriend, and also hiking isn't as fun by yourself.
Eventually he laboured up the hill and collapsed next to me.
"I don't think I can do this" he said.
"Try doing it my way" I suggested.
"I am doing it your way" he said. "I couldn't sustain the speed anymore."
So sometimes it seems there is a third type of hiker:
- The plodder
- The speed-and-pauser
- The speedy person who realises that they are unable to go up such an incline at such a speed, so reluctantly turns into the plodder.
Nick, it turns out, is number 3.
Anyway, I digress.
We finally zigzagged our way up the to the top of the hill and collapsed into some benches at the top, our breathing laboured and our feet extremely sore. Thankfully, our breath came back to us and we were able to have some lunch while admiring the view, as well as some of the birds that were darting around the nearby flower bushes.
After some time of relaxing, we begrudgingly got to our feet. We still had a long way to go before we hit the wax palms, which was the entire reason we were there to begin with. So we hit the track again, which was now a gravel road. I think maybe one vehicle passed us while we headed down the other side of the hill we'd just climbed, as did a few locals riding horses.
On this side of the hill, rather than tropical Andean forest, we were hiking under huge pine trees which stretched up and up and up. The clouds were starting to roll in as well, and the whole area looked rather eerie, with fog spreading like tentacles beneath the canopy and along the road. Nick enjoyed photographing this and it was really quite neat, almost like we were walking through the Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter.
However, one thing about the cloud meant that there was a risk that the viewpoints of the wax palms were also going to be fogged up, so we hurried down the hill until the checkpoint on the other side, where we had to pay the other 20k COP each. Thank goodness for those Dutchmen earlier in the day because I honestly do not know what we would have done without their cash! Maybe the checkpoint would have just let us through, but I don't know. I believe the fee is because the hike is on private land.
Anyway, we did make it to the viewpoints, and while it was cloudy, we think in hindsight that the cloud was actually better because it makes it much easier to see the scale of the wax palms, whereas if it had been a clear day then the trees would have all blended into the background.
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| What a view! |
The wax palms in the Valle de Cocora are the tallest palms in the world, growing up to 45 metres high. They are actually Colombia's national tree and it's easy to see why - they were unreal. It was difficult to get photographs capturing their scale but believe me, they are tall. We visited several different lookouts to try and get a better view of the valley, but we were also super tired by this point so while looking around the valley was cool, we were also really keen to sit down. Additionally, it had started raining so we were pretty over it.
Once we had descended the hill we had to walk another 10 minutes down the road back to where the jeeps had dropped us off. Exhausted, we tiredly climbed into the jeep where we were relieved to get an actual seat rather than needing to cling onto the back for the journey back to Salento.
Tejo
Back in Salento we headed back to our hotel where we showered and collapsed into bed where we spent the majority of the rest of the evening, until we pulled ourselves up and headed back into town for dinner. On the hike we had met a girl who had invited us to join her and some other people she'd met to play Tejo. Tejo is a traditional Colombian game where you throw rocks at small triangular envelopes that are filled with gun powder. If you manage to hit them then they explode on impact. It was super fun although we were all inaccurate throwers, and even if we did hit them then there wasn't many explosions. When we asked the instructor, he said that the humidity can dampen the gunpowder, meaning that it isn't as noisy, but he demonstrated that they would definitely still explode if they were hit with the proper force. And explode they did!
Essentially, you have to stand back a few metres and throw your rock, or puck, at a board that is covered in clay with a metal ring in the middle of it. Around this middle ring are the envelopes of gunpowder. I don't know if many people know the origins of the game but it is thought to be pre-Columbian but now there is often a space to play tejo in every town and city, and there are organised competitions through Colombia with professional teams competing. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of foreigners at this tejo hall in Salento and apparently there are even some hostels throughout Colombia that offer free tejo so maybe it's something we'll have to look out for again while we're still here!
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| We didn't get a photo playing tejo so here's one of Nick drinking coffee in the plaza instead |