After Medellin we were wondering where to go next. Cartagena was suggested by many but it was expensive and we were afraid that it’d be too touristy so we decided to go to Salento and trek around the Cocora valley.
Our hotel was right in the town square. It was the festive season and the town was still lit with Christmas lights. There were loudspeakers blaring loud music – reggaeton and remixes of reggaeton. Luckily, our rooms were not facing the main square so it wasn’t very loud.
The trail around the valley took 8 hours and it was splendid! I haven’t seen such tall palm trees in my life. Once we reached the top, there was a hummingbird trail which was optional. It was a bit expensive and required walking across a river, onto a steep hillock which finally led us to a house with a lady feeding the birds sugar water. It did put me off initially as I was expecting a vast expanse of flowers with hummingbirds all around. Nevertheless, we saw some spectacular varieties of hummingbirds with iridescent blue and green feathers, long tails. We finally finished the trek after getting lost for a bit on the way back past a few wooden suspension bridges and waterfalls.

From here we stopped by Cali which is the salsa capital of the world. Luckily it was the annual salsa festival! During the day, there wasn’t much happening but by late evening Cali would liven up with the best of salsa musical performances. Unfortunately, we were not allowed in these venues because Leo was with us. We convinced him to stay back at the Airbnb on the last night of the salsa fest and went around midnight to a venue across the street. By this time all the musicians had left and we were listening to a DJ set of salsa music 😂🎶

The next stop was in Popayan, a whitewashed colonial city. We chose this town to celebrate new years eve. Twas just the three of us. The Colombians version of the old man is typically a political figure stuffed with firecrackers. They’re set on fire to welcome the new year.

We took a bus to Ipiales which is a border town to continue our journey to Ecuador. Epiphany in Colombia is huge as people celebrate the day of the black and white. All around people were throwing water, flour and shaving cream. We arrived at our hostel at 11 in the night after a long bus journey. We almost slipped at the entrance which was laced in flour dough slick. We could hear people celebrating.

Ipiales has a reputation for being a dangerous town. The hostel entrance had a double door and had a huge lock with chains. Once we were in, Arjun asked if we could venture out to celebrate the festival and the girl shook her head in disapproval – too dangerous for gringo faced Arjun. So we could only watch it from our bus the next morning on the way to the Ecuadorian border. It seemed like fun.

Goodbye Colombia and all the lovely Colombians we met. We love you all!