Salento, Colombia is the Most Beautiful Place in Colombia!

I'm skipping ahead a bit, but I wanted to tell you why Salento is the most beautiful place in Colombia, arguably in South America.

Salento is a tiny village of 9,000 located almost equally 8hrs by bus from Medellin and Bogota. Having stayed a few days in Medellin, we took the bus to the neighboring town of Armenia and after 7hrs of twisty and turny roads we took a local busetta to the town center of Salento. Arriving in the main plaza in the evening, we hailed a jeep taxi (all the cabs here are old jeeps) and were off to "La Serrana" (a hostel highly recommended by Boris, despite being a 15-20 minute walk from town.

These are the views around the hostel "La Serano"

We arrived just before 7pm and were able to join the other hostel guests for the nightly communal dinners. What a great idea - for <$10 you get a home-cooked meal that's shared with others.


We stayed here for a week and spent the time exploring the area, relaxing and horseback riding. One day we went on a tour of a coffee farm.

How much a young tree produces vs. an older tree. Which is why coffee shrubs are axed after a few years.

After the coffee beans are peeled, they are dried like this.

Roasting the coffee.

And of course drinking the coffee. We brought some back home with us!

Another day we went horseback riding around the beautiful hills.

Another day we hiked around the wax palm valley. It was really designed for horseback riding, so unfortunately the roads were pretty heavily rutted. Still very pretty.

Another day, I went horseback riding while Bev just relaxed and read.

the guide runs off to snatch a few oranges off a tree

going through a bamboo forest

We also went into town for some tasty food.

sweet corn arepas on the street, mmmmm

tasty fresh fruit

After our relaxing week in Salento, it was time to finally wrap up our trip. We headed off to Armenia and then to Bogota. But not so fast, we were about to have a run-in with a volcano. More on that in the next post!


More photos (click below)!

2012.5 Salento, Colombia