EXPLORING THE BEAUTIFUL COFFEE TRIANGLE – A MUST SEE! (PART 2)

On our second day of the fam trip in the beautiful coffee region we had a pretty full program waiting for us! At 7am we enjoyed a nice breakfast at our hotel Pueblo Bello before our bus picked us up. The first stop was at the botanical garden and its butterfly farm near Armenia. It consists of 15 hectar and holds the second largest collection of palm trees worldwide. Here you can find 190 species of palm trees which cover 13 hectares of the botanical garden. Actually there exist 252 species and Colombia is ranked second after Malaysia and before Brazil with its diversity of palm trees.
The wax palm valley “Valle del Cocora” is one of the most famous sights in the coffee region – but also in the botanical garden you can find 7 species of only wax palms . It actually takes 90-100 years for them to grow. The main attraction is the butterfly farm which actually has the shape of a butterfly which you can see from the observation tower. It is home to 1,500-2,000 butterflies of 30-35 different species.

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Afterwards we continued our journey to the little village Pijao for about 45 minutes. Here we had a nice lunch before some musicians gave us some entertainment with their typical colombian rhyme songs which they just made up by singing for our group. Then we also had a presentation of kids of a folk dancing group that showed us their typical dances on the market place. Pijao is a cute little authentic village with houses of colorful fassads, small handicraft and coffee shops and impressing surroundings of coffee landscapes along the cordillera. It seemed that the little town was having a holiday and just everyone was there to show the best side of this small town – from the musicians and dance group to artisanians, the firemen and a typically “packed” jeep willys. At the café Luqman they explained us the process of making their coffee and of course we tried a delicious one there!

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Then we took another ride through the amazing countryside of the coffee region and arrived at Café Concord after a 40 minutes ride. This place is just a wonderful viewpoint surrounded by fantastic picturesque landscapes! I would declare it as paradise for nature and coffee lovers! Of course, we also needed to try their coffee while enjoying the sunset in this beautiful place!

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Our final destination for today was the beautiful colonial town Salento. It took us about 1,5 hours to get to the hotel Salento Real where they served us a delicius dinner and where we spent the night.

Have a look at my other experiences in the beautiful coffee triangle – part 1!

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