baileybrent

I spent a few days in Manizales, a city with 6 universities in the coffee region in the center of Colombia. The city itself is perched on a narrow ridge surrounded by mountainous farmland. The urban hills in the city make San Francisco look midwestern in comparison. There’s one main street that runs along the crest of the ridge. Going just a half block in either direction you descend down streets as steep as any in San Francisco. Here, as in Medellin, the gondola is one of the most important modes of public transport. But in Manizales, the views from these ridge hugging streets are of green mountain ranges and rows of small coffee plantations. It’s really a beautiful. But sadly, it’s also very wet, and often very cold. A single day will contain all the weather we see in San Francisco throughout the year. Starting cold, turning hot, then rainy and eventually turning back to cold.

The other challenge in Manizales was that I was staying at the strangest hostel I’ve encountered on this trip. It was a beautiful, large, old flat that had been converted into a youth hostel, but retained the large formal dining space looking out of the city and mountains. But sometime recently the hostel had changed ownership and fallen off the tourist map. Consequently, it was empty, kept dark, and was always several degrees colder than the weather outside. The only other guests were relatives of the new owners who kept themselves hidden away except for occasional glimpses down corridors. Thankfully, the staff of a few local college students were friendly and kept me from going days without speaking to people. But between the cold, the wet, and the dark empty hallways, I found it difficult to stay in Manizales for more than a few days. I think Manizales could be a great city to get know, for someone with the time and the Spanish skills to meet more local people. I did take a few Spanish lessons in Manizales, but it was still a struggle to meet people and I spent most of my time, in or out of the hostel, alone. I decided I’d rather work on my Spanish back in Medellin, where making friends was easier, the rain was slightly less constant, and I had a good lead on an opportunity for volunteering.

With pool halls, card rooms, and casinos everywhere in Colombia, it’s pretty obvious that Colombians like their games. But I was not aware that they had invented one of the all time great parlor games. Exploding darts!
The game is basically like horseshoes, except that you’re chucking a heavy hockey puck across a circus tent at targets that explode. At least that’s the idea. But for some reason our targets weren’t exploding…
The targets are little paper triangles full of gun powder, lying in the center of a bed of clay. The players stand far away and lob their pucks underhand at the clay bed, trying to hit little paper triangles in the center ring. All of this is free if you buy drinks, and takes place in a mud floored tent with blasting circus music.
Sadly, I was unable to capture any explosions on film. It turns out it’s not very easy to hit those little triangles…

On Apirl 11th Zoe went back home to Argentina and I had my first day of solo travel. I moved into a nicer a room at a different hostel with the intention of spending a day or two editing photos and getting the blog up to date before beginning the next phase of my trip (pretty laughable now considering I’m currently writing about something that happened a month ago). Unfortunately, that was the day that the internet went out in the new hostel, and the water went out everywhere in town. And it poured buckets most of the day. There’s something very strange about seeing water everywhere, except coming out of the pipes.
Despite the lack internet or functioning plumbing, I still had a productive day of editing photos in my nice little home office.

Wet everywhere

Once again, lack of navigation has led to a much longer than expected hike. Zoe and I grabbed a “taxi” (which in Salento means cramming into the back of a 1970s jeep) and headed to the Valle De Cocora. We were told that there was a nice hiking loop that can be done in 5 hours. It starts off with a nice walk through the valley, surrounded by bright green hills and tall wax palms. Then it goes into the jungle and follows the river towards the mountains. From there it was a little unclear what was supposed to happen. And consequently, we spent a few hours hiking up the wrong mountain. It was a beautiful hike, but after more than an hour of scaling the switch back trail up the mountain the rain started. Rain starts sooner or later every day in Salento. Usually in the afternoon sometime. We had hoped to finish our hike before the rain, but this day the rain started earlier, and came down hard. We were able to take shelter and eat a little lunch in a look out fort. There’s not much of a view when you’re high up in the cloud forest and it’s raining. Just the trees right in front of you then blank white. But it was nice to get out of the rain for a minute.
It was around this time that we realized we were climbing the wrong mountain and had to turn back. But on our way down the mountain the switch back trails had turned into rushing water ways. I was grateful for my rented the galoshes, even though they were now full of water.
When we got back down the mountain to the river, we still had to figure out which trail to take and weren’t sure whether or not it would loop around. For some reason, being a little bit lost in the jungle is more stressful when you’re getting soaked with rain. But we pressed on up the other mountain trail. Eventually we reached a reached a small finca, where we were fed the odd local favorite of hot sugar water and cold cheese, and given directions. The view from the finca was amazing, looking across the river valley to a tall mountain with clouds spilling over it. Then, as we walked out the long road from the finca back into the valley, we were treated to even better views and a break in the rain. As the clouds cleared we could see the entire valley of wax palms, the retreating clouds below us, the river, and valleys beyond the jungle covered mountains. We were still totally soaked. But the walk back down into the valley was worth several hours of slogging through the mud.

These guys were in the middle of fixing the bridge when we went across.