Valle de Cocora

We spent our October break in the Zona Cafetera town of Salento.  There, we visited a coffee finca, hiked amongst the tallest palms in the world, went horseback riding (Linnea went 3 times) soaked in thermal hot springs and relaxed at our hostel, La Serrana.

On our first full day there, we went hiking in the Valle de Cocora is just east of Salento.  From Salento, we took a 30 minute ride in a jeep taxi called a Willy and started the hike.  The valley is know for the wax palms that can reach up to 60 meters high.  Palma de cera is the largest palm tree in the world and is Colombia's national tree.  The trees were threatened to extinction because of their use of wax for candles, being cut by farmers to build with and the fronds that were used on Palm Sunday.  So in 1985 the Colombian government designated the valley a protected area to preserve the endangered tree.  As you can see, the trees came back.

Kid hikers - Eli, Linnea, Dempsey and Finn

Before the big trek over the mountain

At the top of the mountain, we found the La Montaña ranger post where we had a cup of chocolate con queso, a typical Colombian snack.  We were up in a cloud forest and it was cold and a little drizzly.  The valley ranges in altitudes of 1800 to 2400 meters.

After leaving the ranger post, we zig-zagged down the mountain and made several crossings over the Rio Quindío on rickety suspension bridges.

After making it off the mountain, we were in the valley where the majority of the magnificent 

palms grew.  We were in good company with a lot of cows too.

 End of the 5 hour hike!

Time Marches On

We can't believe that it's the end of March, which means it's almost summer!  That may seem a little overly-optimistic, but this time of year always seems to pass very quickly and the next thing we know we'll be back in California for the summer.

March always brings a birthday in our family.  We celebrated at Julia, an Italian restaurant.

We spent Semana Santa in Carmen del Apicalá.  About a 3 1/2 hour drive southwest of Bogotá, it's in "hot country".  We got a 7 bedroom house with 3 other families.  All we needed was the pool, food, and a blender.

The Colombian version of the Otter Pop is Bon Ice.  Kids ate a lot of these.

 Linnea playing hair stylist with Izzy

Almost full moon

More Bon Ice bliss and Mickey Mouse pancakes at the breakfast bar.

We trapped a little scorpion in the house and let him go far, far away. 

 8 adults and 8 kids!

Thanksgiving at Mesitas del Colegio

We spent Thanksgiving at our friend Sandy's finca in Mesitas del Colegio, about a 2 1/2 hour drive southwest of Bogotá.  The property has been in her family for years and it was once a high producing coffee plantation.  Coffee is still produced and processed here, but on a smaller scale.

An alter is being built, but the Virgin Mary hasn't shown up yet.  We improvised.

Walking up the river.

Centipede!

 Sandy and Linnea

Pictures from around the property...

Little Yellow Jobs

 The old beneficiadero (I don't know if I am spelling that right, but it's a coffee processing barn).  It has a lot if big roasters inside that they stopped using because they were powered by gasoline.  

 Inside the beneficiadero.

 In the states, we only see poinsettias in December, but in Colombia, we see them all the time.  They are full shrubs, not gangly and leggy like the ones that get planted in the ground after the holidays are over.

We had a great Thanksgiving meal of Eric's deep fried turkey, Allison's brussel sprouts and white beans, vegetarian pumpkin lasagna for the vegetarian in the group, and my sweet potato gratin, stuffing and pumpkin flan.  Being in Colombia, we had to get creative with some of the ingredients that were available to us.  We scrambled to find cream of tartar (got it from our neighbor from California who brought it back from the states), pumpkin puree (we made it from scratch and will probably never buy canned pumpkin puree again), and paid as much for the oil to fry the turkey as we did for the actual turkey.  Sorry, there are no photos of the meal.  We were too busy eating!

Parque Nacional Chicaque

Our weekend plans to go to a finca for a warm, lazy weekend by the pool fell apart on Thursday night.  On Friday, we tried to make a secondary plan, but nothing panned out.  So when we woke up on Saturday morning, we thought we would just have a Bogotá weekend, but that just didn't feel right.  So we started a quick search of places we could go that were close to the city.

That short search led us to Parque Nacional Chicaque.  A 40 minute taxi to the southern suburb of Soacha near one of the southern bus terminals took us to "la casa amarillo" where a bus would be there to take us the additional 30 minutes to the park.  We found the yellow house and the lunch spot that was next to it, so we sat for some arepas and empanadas while we waited for the bus to arrive.  Surprisingly, it was there and we were off to Chicaque.

Chicaque is a privately owned park established in 1990.  Within this small park, there are over 300 species of birds, 30 mammals and 7 different types of forests.

When we arrived, we paid our entrance fee and headed for El Refugio, our hotel.  Thankfully, we each had only a backpack for the overnight trip because we had a 45 minute hike to get to our hotel.  I guess we missed that bit of information when we looked over the website earlier that morning when making our decision to go there.

Linnea arriving at El Refugio

 Hummer

 Sunset from the deck looking toward the Magdelena Valley

 Morning view of the mountain face, Contrafuerte, from our room

 The forest trail called Bosque de Robles where we took a hike on Sunday morning.  Colombia is the only country in South America with oak trees.

The lower camping zone.  

 We decided to take a 4-wheel vehicle out of the park... 

 As we were waiting at the entrance of the park for our bus to take us back to Bogotá, we had to wait a bit, so we slipped into a restaurant for coffee and pastries.  The cloud surrounding the mountain top was so thick that the camera had a hard time focusing.

Halloween in Colombia

Have you seen the ghost of John?

Long white bones with skin all gone.

Ooohhh ooohhh oohh oohh.

Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on?

We've been hearing this song now for the last few days from Dempsey who learned it at school.  It's a beautiful song but after hearing it 229 times, its level of creepiness rapidly increases.  

Halloween is surprisingly a big thing here in Bogota.  Last weekend, both in our neighborhood and in Simon Bolivar Park, there were people dressed in costume already.  There is a chain store that typically sells home goods throughout the year called Cachivaches.  But around the beginning of September, the costumes, wigs, vampire teeth and witch hats fill the store and most of your Halloween desires can be met there.  We were able to make our own costumes by getting some stuff from Cachivaches (witch's wig and hat, bat teeth, a top hat),  on the street (a cheap umbrella that was then cut for the bat wings),    "Smoking Ramiro's" (where Eric rented a tuxedo shirt, brightly colored vest and bib to look like President Snow from the Hunger Games) and the school drama department costume room.  We also randomly bought Linnea's witch dress at a seamstress shop in San Gil that was selling lots of costumes when we were visiting there a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some of our highlights for halloween, starting last Saturday night at our building Halloween Party and at school today.

 2 ninjas and a witch

 The pumpkin line-up

 President Snow, Ninja, Witch and Bat

 Another 5th grate teacher and I representing the dark creatures of the fauna world.

Dempsey in the primary and elementary parade, where about 800 students filed through the hallway.

The parade also passed through Middle School where we saw Eric playing science professor.  He was dropping bubbles filled with smoke down onto the parade.

Linnea with her classmates: Gypsy, Wonder Woman and Bat Girl.