We heard about a supposedly beautiful organic coffee growing region located in the mountains about 1 hour from the coast and decided it was time to head up away from the humidity to enjoy some of that Colombian coffee, do some mountain biking and see some great sunsets.
After taking an old ghetto shared taxi (aka from about 1960 with no shocks or door panels), we got up there just in time for another beautiful sunset over the valley and ocean. We decided to camp for a few nights, relax and do some hiking. We spent the first day hiking to a small coffee plantation and to some natural swimming pools and waterfalls (boy are we out of shape, btw). The water was COLD! What a change! The coffee plantation tour was given by a 12 year old girl and was so interesting. Did you know the reason the coffee beans are brown is only because they are toasted? I didn`t. Also, all of the premium first (and second) quality coffee is sent to the US and Europe, and the Colombians are left to drink the bad remainder of the crop?! That must be why all they drink is instant coffee instead of the real thing!
The next day Scott went on a 7 hour long downhill mountain biking excursion while I got a massage... My massage was well, interesting. I would call it more of a spiritual massage than a deep tissue or Swedish (typical) massage. We started off sitting on a rock, holding hands (that`s right), and practicing breathing for about 10 minutes. We then moved to our flat rock which was used for sacrifices in the past and has a very "spiritual" presence. Hector then proceeded to remove the "evil" spirits from my body while spastically shaking my butt. He literally was jiggling my butt for what seemed like an hour (maybe I have a lot of evil spirits in my butt!)... I was trying to hold back laughter while he was making sounds like a bee and jiggling away. Meanwhile it started to drizzle, then rain, then pour.. so after 20 minutes of my so called massage, I had to run in the pouring rain into a cabana and start the process all over again. I could go on but you wouldn`t believe how strange this experience was... but for $15 for an hour of entertainment and laughs, totally worth it.
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| Winning, winning!! |
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| Beautiful View on the bike ride |
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| Out of the way horsies |
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| Yeah, we rode through a bunch of rivers. We rock! |
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| Not hard at all. These ancient acquducts are used to transport water all over the jungle. Easy to ride on too. |
Guess how you get a mountain bike up about 2000 feet from where you`re staying? Of course you load it, and yourself on the back of a motorcycle and hold on for dear life. I wish I had a picture of this...it was extremely ridiculous. Anyway, as you can see the mountain bike ride was great, beautiful, and fairly challenging! We went down about 6,000 vertical feet through jungle, coffee plantations, banana farms, over aqueducts, and finally to the sea. Ya gotta do these kinda things to keep your sanity around here! HA!
