Jardin and Salento — The road liss traveled

The town of Jardin lies up in the mountains a few hours south of Medellin. I’d read about it in some blogs and it sounded like a pretty nice, mostly non-touristy little town with some fun stuff to do around. The night before I got on the bus I went to some techno club with a Dutch guy who was into that scene (not really my thing, but once again amazing girls) so I was really hoping to get some sleep on this bus. Not happening! 3.5 hours of winding roads and potholes, ugh. I got checked into my hostel and had a walk around town, which you can do in twenty minutes! This whole area is known for it’s trout farms, so I walked just outside of town to have lunch in one. To my dismay the whole thing was deep fried, and served with patacones – fried plantains, so fried food paired with fried food. Very Colombian! It was decent, but I’d much rather have a properly grilled trout with rice and veggies please!

There is also also a cable car that goes up into the foothills, which is kind of neat. It used to be for locals getting up into the coffee plantations, but nowadays they’ve built roads, so it’s mostly just a tourist attraction. I had heard from someone else that it rains every single evening, so I made sure to get back to the hostel when the dark clouds started gathering, and true to form as soon as it got dark the skies opened up. It poured for hours, fortunately some Italians were making pasta (shocking I know) in the hostel and invited me to join in, so I didn’t have to venture out into the storm.

The next day was Jardin’s prime adventure attraction, a waterfall that falls through a hole in a cave, aptly named la cueva del esplendor. You can take a jeep/tuk tuk mostly up to the top and hike the last bit, but I thought hiking all the way up would be more fun. Unwisely I forgot to download the offline map of the area on maps.me, an app that is much much better locating small roads and hiking paths than google maps. So instead I had to trust google maps walking directions. I was heading along a river valley trail when google maps had me veer off it, but there was nothing to veer off to, so I kept going.

Eventually I ran into a young Colombian guy on his bike who wanted to walk with me and practice his English, so ok sure. This guy was definitely the weirdest person I’d met on the trip so far, he basically talked non-stop about weirdly deep topics, death, Freudian psychology, atheism, Gertrude Stein quotes, god knows what else. He knew lots of big words, but also his English wasn’t good enough to connect them coherently. I hardly even said anything. He was definitely creeping me out, but I wasn’t sure if I could tell him to get lost without him hacking me to pieces. At some point the trail just ended and the only way left was to go straight up the mountain on some very steep cow grazing land. I powered uphill as fast as I could with him continually asking to wait up, Not happening! Plus he was still carrying his stupid bike. So finally I lost him! whew!

Only problem now was that I was basically lost! Well not totally, I had a vague idea of where I was at on the google maps GPS, and I was on farmland, so I was still close to civilization. I meandered my way up this hill/mountain for about 1.5 hours along muddy cow paths, opening gates lined with barbed wire fencing, just waiting to see what it would look like at the top. It finally flattened out and there was a small ranch where I could ask for directions. There was a guy busy pounding on some horseshoes, and he didn’t seem exactly pleased that I was bothering him, but he told me the path was around to the left somewhere, so that was good enough for me! I ran into one gate that I couldn’t open, but it wasn’t lined with straight wire (not barbed) so I figured I’d hop it. At first I thought it was static electricity as my leg scraped over the top, but no no no! I yelled at in shock (literally in shock) as this was a god damn electric fence! Fun times!

I did manage to get over it without touching the wire and continued on! Finally I found an actual trail that eventually had a signpost towards la cueva! Another 45 minutes later and I was finally there, over 4 hours of hiking when I expected 2, haha. Unfortunately you can’t go straight to the waterfall by yourself, you’ve got to wait until a park ranger takes you with a small group, but the walk down to it straight through the jungle, and it is a pretty amazing sight. The water literally falls through a hole in the roof of the cavern. The sunlight hits the rising mist and creates a cool rainbow effect as well! And because I walked so much faster than the rest of our group I had a few minutes to enjoy it all to myself and take a few photos before the selfies en masse. You an also swim in the pool, but it’s in the shade and the water is freezing! I was one of two people that took the plunge, but I did not last long! We stayed and admired the place for about 45 minutes and then headed back up.

This time I took the path that actually leads to a real road along with a Mexican guy that I had met earlier. Supposedly you could take a tuk tuk once your reach the next small village a few miles away (which I was eagerly hoping for!!) but no such luck. We’d have another 5 or 6 miles walking back into town – all downhill though. This almost screwed up my plans, as I wanted to get to the bird park before dusk to see a very rare Colombian bird, the Gallito de Roca. I did make it back into town just in time though and found my way to the entrance with 20 minutes to spare! I still don’t really know anything about these birds, but they are pretty damn cool looking! The placement of their eyes makes it look they have enormous brains. The top, bright red half of their bodies made me think of that red monster thing in Looney Tunes, Gossamer (the google search ‘all red monster thing’ worked fantastically!)

Then I had some time to relax in the square where all the locals hang out and try some more exotic fruit juices from the myriad of food/drink tents they have set up. I met up with Diego, the guy I hiked down with, and we sampled some grilled meats, arepas, and even the Colombian version of a burrito. I will say, one of my complaints about the meat here is often they aren’t shy about overcooking it! The seasoning is good though and my large cut of pork costs $3, so I can’t complain too much. And then of course the rains came and it was back to the hostel.

I was off the next morning, although I didn’t fully realize what kind of travel day I was in for! The 8am bus wasn’t your traditional bus, the entire thing (besides the cab) was open air, consisting of wooden benches to sit on, and raised really high off the ground because of the ginormous tires. It did have a tarp over to go over the top and sides in case it rained, as it was that very morning. The tarp is completely black, making the seating section very dark and claustrophobic. And the scenery outside is supposed to be gorgeous, we just couldn’t see any of it. I actually moved to very back row so I could roll up the tarp a bit and look out. Of course you need a truck like this because the road conditions are not ideal, so sitting in the very back row to catch a glimpse of the scenery had it’s downsides. It was bumpy as hell obviously.

At some point a few hours in some locals in cowboy hats hopped on, sporting a half empty bottle of Aguadiente, the most popular liquor in Colombia. They were in a rowdy mood for 10:30am and were attempting to get anyone around them to drink it with them. I politely declined, but I was surprised to see they got the two Colombian girls next to them to have a few sips. Then they put the pressure back on me, basically saying these girls are drinking…. Where are your balls? So I did cave and had a few swigs, haha. It’s got a liquorice taste, which I don’t really care for, especially before noon on a bumpy bus, but it was kind of fun. The guys were trying to play matchmaker with me and one of the Colombian girls, who was actually pretty attractive. This is why I really need to speak much better Spanish!

After 3.5 hours we finally made it to Riosucio (a town named dirty river, ha) and then from there we had to catch a 3 hour bus to city called Perreira, and then from there another hour long bus ride to the touristy town of Salento, our final destination. So it was three different buses and 9 hours of travel to a place that really isn’t that far away distance-wise! That’s Colombia for ya.

Salento is also another nice highland town, nestled in the foothills. It’s similar to Jardin, but a little bigger and more touristy. It’s main attractions are it’s coffee plantations and the Cocora Valley a bit outside of town that host the worlds biggest wax palm trees! Pretty interesting to see palm trees in this part of the world! They’re so tall and skinny they look like they can barely support themselves. Do to a bit of snoring in my dorm room I was up awake nice and early - and the first jeep to get you to the valley leaves at 6:30am, so why not? And it rains in the afternoons, so the earlier the better! There’s a nice loop that takes a couple hours to do.

I ended up hiking with an Aussie and Canadian girl and we finished up the hike before noon and then it was back to Salento for lunch and a much needed nap! I went out for dinner and beers that night and did a coffee tour the next morning (which was cool to learn the whole process!) and that was it for my short stay in Salento. At this point I felt like I had seen enough Columbian hillside towns, and I was getting a bit tired of all the afternoon/evening rains, so it was time to keep heading south towards Ecuador, but with a couple pit stops along the way!