Salento, Colombia

Salento, Colombia is known for its extremely colorful buildings, coffee farms and proximity to the Cocora Valley. I had seen photos of this place before coming so I knew I wanted to have my camera ready but I had no idea what I was in for until I arrived.

We took a bus to Salento from Cali via Armenia. It was approximately 5ish hours total including the bus transfer in Armenia as there is no direct bus.

When we arrived to this little town I was immediately overwhelmed by all the color everywhere. Every building and every door was begging for my attention!

We stayed at The Corner House Hostel which was perfectly located on Calle Real, the main street in Salento. The staff there were really helpful and accommodating. We dropped our stuff off and began to explore, camera in hand. There are a handful of older men that come out and sit in the same benches everyday; talking and watching the people go up and down the street. They quickly became one of my favorite aspects of this main street.

Salento is an artsy little town and there are plenty of shops to find homemade craft items, jewelry, souvenirs and of course plenty of restaurants to eat at. This town is pretty small and it is a fairly touristy place so I definitely recommend getting up early if you want to photograph the street while its empty or all the colorful doors before everything opens up for the day.

El Mirador or the lookout point is straight up the main street, Calle Real. You have to walk up quite a few stairs to get there so give yourself some time. I was already feeling the altitude a bit so it took me about 20ish minutes plus a couple puffs from my inhaler to get to the top. You can’t really see all the colors of the town from the top but what made it really cool for me was after the sun had set and I was walking back down the stairs, the lights from below started turning on and the town had a spectacular magical glow to it!

One of the many things Colombia is famous for is their coffee and rightfully so. I highly recommend going on a coffee tour while in this area. We got up early one morning and visited Finca de Don Elias. The tour itself is around $10 which includes a cup of their coffee at the end of the tour and you can catch a “Willy,” jeep ride from the center of Salento to the farm for about $1-$2 per way.

On the tour they will take you through the whole process of making coffee starting with the seedlings all the way through the growth, harvesting and roasting process. At the end of the tour you can enjoy a hot cup of their very own coffee while enjoying the view. You will also have the option of purchasing some of their coffee by the kilo.

Now I have to warn you about a couple of things if you choose to purchase the packaged coffee. Buying the packaged coffee is a great gift idea but you can only bring so many packages back into the states and shipping coffee from Colombia is the biggest pain in the ass that I have ever encountered. lol

1. If you decide to ship any packaged coffee through a registered courier or private company you MUST have a receipt for purchase of the coffee.

2. You also MUST ship it with another item, as the coffee cannot be shipped on its own. (another souvenir or clothing item, just a postcard is not enough.)

3. You cannot ship more than 1 Kg of coffee in each package.

4. you cannot ship more than 1 Kg of coffee to the same address.

5. They say it will take 1 month to the USA if you ship via the regular postal service but be prepared it may take much much longer and also be prepared that it could just never arrive.

Y’all! I bought coffee for my whole family without knowing any of this so just make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I made. Next time my family is getting postcards and/or magnets. (I shipped the packages to my family 1.5 months ago and they still haven’t received anything. oh well.)