The day has finally come, after 3 weeks in the coffee region of Colombia, I am off to a coffee tour! Truth is I was waiting for my friend from Washington State to come visit me so we could go together. Steven came with his friend Jorge and we got to go on this coffee tour together.

From the center of town the tour was about 2.5 hour walk/hike down the side of a mountain to a river. Green was everywhere! There were new birds we discovered that were neon blue, yellow and red.

We finally reached the house of Pedro, the owner of Salchimama where his wife and two daughters lived. It was a tiny house resembling a tree house and their beds were all tents. The house was covered in natural art from seeds and leaves. They had great knowledge on the birds in Colombia and just loved sharing their lives with us.

The tour was all day, we learned about the surrounding vegetation and how that affects the animals and coffee. It’s truly amazing how welcoming Colombians are. They provided us lunch and then the later half of the day they took us to their tiny house a couple meters away on the top of a hill. It overlooked lulo fruit plants and coffee fields.

      

The process of coffee making was surprising how simple it can be. Did you know that coffee only leaves Colombia in the form of a white bean, which actually smells like fermented vinegar? Then wherever it is exported extra ingredients are added and they charge a lot of money to sell it with additives.

The beans are found in bushes that are red and not native to Colombia. They were imported from Africa and Vietnam. Colombia has a great climate to grow the beans, making it the third latest county exportin coffee behind Vietnam and Brazil.

      

The tour was $20,000 COP ($10.00 USD) and was worth every penny. However to take back the jeep instead of walking the two hours its a whopping $70,000 COP ($35.00 USD).