Tall trees, Tatacoa, Tierradentro – Day 213 (16303 miles)

We stayed in the grounds of a very nice hostel with lovely hot showers (very important) close to the small town of Salento.

It’s part of the coffee growing region in Colombia so said beverage is very much in evidence.  Mobile Barista, is this still your retirement plan Neil Mc?

The taxi jeeps aren’t full unless there’s at least 3 passengers hanging off the back.

A bit of Colombian street food, fried plantain with cheese and jam.  I wasn’t keen.

Arepas, corn pancakes filled with cheese, much nicer.

We did a great 15 mile walk around the Valle de Cocora, we were followed by this little fella for a few miles.  He was much more sure footed than I was.

The Valle is famous for these strangely tall and spindly palm trees.  Beautiful views in between the patches of mist.

Salenta by night was lively, by chance we happened to be there for the 175th anniversary of the town.  Mucho eating, drinking and salsa dancing.

Our next stop was the Tatacoa Desert which in itself was stunning and the scenery on the way was pretty good too.

Being a desert this area is known for spectacular starry skies, unfortunately not this night, it was pretty cloudy.

But the scenery just keeps getting better.

Lots of landslides.

And water.

After a long, slow but very pretty journey we arrived in Tierradentro, a humid jungly environment where you can visit tombs that date back between 600 and 900 AD.

We visited the town’s 2 small museums together, quite interesting but the hilight was meeting a group of about 10 Colombian ladies and children who wanted their photos taken with us.   Afterwards John went back to the van as he had hurt his foot on our 15 miles walk a couple of days ago and needed to rest.  I wanted to see some of the tombs so headed up a hill to find them.

It was a bit desolate and used to be guerilla country a few years ago.  So I strode forth purposely and tried not to get spooked by every noise in the bushes.

Now, the font of all knowledge (the Lonely Planet) states that you descend to the tombs via a spiral staircase.  That is true, except I expected to descend once and wander through multiple tombs.  The reality is you descend into a tomb (not very big) and come up again, then repeat 15 or so times.  It felt a bit like a step class!  The tombs were interesting but rather samey so just 1 pic below.

I caught up with some of the kids we had met in the museum for another photo.

It was a shame we hadn’t got photos of more of the family we had met.  Later that afternoon we met some Brits, who said they had just been shown photos of us!?!  It turned out the Colombian family were in a bar down the only road in town so we decided we would catch up with them.

A nice group photo turned into a couple of hours of salsa dancing and shots of Aguar Diente!  We had such fun, we held the babies, kissed the Great Granny and tried to learn salsa.

Chao for now.