Salento is very touristy, please be aware. The main road is covered with souvenir boutiques and restaurants.
The main plaza is simple.
Around it, it has a church no one cares about, a police station, a grocery store, a bakery, and a few bars.
I arrived on the Sunday afternoon and there were little stations set up around the park selling the town's main dish: trout!!
The plaza and main were filled with couples and families. It was really nice.
The next morning, the town was like a ghost town.
It was then that I found out about "Rincon de Lucy". It basically this tiny restaurant (only has 2 doors!)
that serves up a delicious deal for 6000$COP. (3.20$CAN)
And it really makes me wonder because there's nothing special about it. In comparison to the place on my street...
The guy has a sign with a photo of himself, he has a loud speaker that blasts music all day long, he has flags, he has tons of space, he's nicely painted... But people just don't go... I didn't see a single soul sit in the restaurant during my stay.
The big highlights of Salento is the coffee (which I wasn't able to abuse because of my stomach acidity!) and visiting Colombia's famous (pride and joy) wax Palm trees.
These trees are special because you can only find them in that region. They almost got extinct, because people were using them for wax and their leaves for palm sunday?
They're native to that Andean region! They grow for like 200 years and are 60-70m tall. They're also situated in a cloud forest.
I genuinely wish I had a guide, some proper hiking boots, a solid water supply and time to do that hike...
Cocora Valley is gorgeous!
Or it made me wish I had guts to get on a horse, because you can do it all on horse back. As I sat in the jeep to go back into town, to eat at Lucy's' again before taking the bus to Pereira, I saw a family get on horse back and I'm sure they were going to have a blast!
(In the truck, in the way in, I was with 7 other tourists from Spain, and couldn't believe how oblivious these peeps were. Decked out in the nicest clothes, despite the fact that it had rained for the past 24 hours and the didn't realize it was going to be insanely muddy.... And completely oblivious of the wax palm trees... Don't people research where they are growing??)
In Pereira I connected to Manizales.
A lot of backpackers I spoke to, had no idea of what city I was talking about... Then I got here and can't understand how, considering it's HUGE! 500,000 people.
I took the cable car up to town: 1500$COP.
This city doesn't have an information desk, so no maps. :(
It's also not such a pretty looking place...
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