No trip to Colombia would be complete without touring and sampling their most famous export (ahem - legal export). So Aaron and I arrived in the mountainous city of Manizales in La Zona Cafetera - also known as The Coffee Zone - expecting to spend a day or two, but ending up there for just short of a week.

The city of Manizales is based at the foot of the Andes, but was hilly enough to be the peak of the Andes . I think I pulled a muscle walking to the supermarket. The most popular hostel in town is called "The Mountain House" and provided all-you-can-drink-coffee and free breakfast, along with the occasional free dinner - so it's popularity was well deserved. The only drawback was that the climate of La Zona Cafetera is perfect for coffee, but not so perfect for travelers - the constant clouds and frequent rains kept us indoors quite a bit, but luckily we had games, pool tables, and a stocked beer refrigerator to keep us busy during the worst of it. 

It was about this time that I figured out I was going to have to buy new shoes. My running shoes were stolen in Nicaragua - over a month ago - but until now I had been fine in my sandals. Manizales was the impetus I needed to get to a store to purchase new shoes - not that the sandals and socks I sported for a few days weren't a good look (take a hint Dad...). So for the first day or so, Aaron and I walked around town, peeked into shops, dodged the rain, and got a great glutes workout . We also visited several travel agencies in town trying to find a good deal to the Parque Nevado Ruiz - a beautiful section of the Andes with tons of flora and wildlife but most easily accessible on a tour or with your own car. Unfortunately, the entrance fee to the park (for gringos anyways) was 40,000 pesos - or about US$25. Then with the transportation and guide it would have put us at about $60 - too much for a one day tour. Especially when we have the entire Andes mountain range still ahead of us on our trip. 

On our third day in town, we took a day trip to nearby Chinchina for a tour of a coffee plantation Cafe Hacienda Guayabal. We walked about 1km uphill to the hacienda from the highway where the bus dropped us off and were welcomed by the señora of the household and some fresh, piping hot coffee. Then umbrellas were distributed and we were led around the farm by the young son Ignacio who knew more about coffee than all the knowledge I have combined . He explained everything to us from the planting, the growing, the picking, to the roasting. Aaron, with his fairly extensive knowledge of wine production, was amazed at how similar the coffee process is to grape vineyards. Apparently, Colombian coffee is a much higher quality than most other regions in the world just due to the location and the land. For example, in most countries, huge machines go through the vineyards and pick the beans off the plants, then dump it all into more machines for processing. But in Colombia, the coffee region is so mountainous that it is impossible for a machine to do any of the work, and therefore humans go through and select only the mature beans, creating a purer and tastier product. Ignacio took us through the entire process and at the end we were greeted with, of course, a fresh brewed cup of coffee. And not quite as expected, 3 tasty empañadas. 

Although the tour was extremely interesting and informational, I think the most exciting part was that the tour was entirely in Spanish and Aaron and I understood everything . In fact, the other people on our tour were new to South America and had us translate the entire thing - and translate their questions for Ignacio. We were even able to ask Ignacio about the rare African type of coffee that savannah animals chew up, excrete, and then coffee farmers process the, um, result, and why that makes better coffee. (The answer, by the way, is "no clue".) 

Most people on our tour bought a little bit of the coffee produced on the farm to take home, although I didn't find out until later that you can't mail it home from Colombia. Unless you have an itemized receipt, the Colombian postal service will not mail anything without the official governmental list of ingredients (apparently too many people were sending non-approved ingredients abroad), so I'll have to wait and send it home from Ecuador.

I'm not entirely sure what captivated us about Manizales, but we ended up staying for 5 full days, just relaxing and walking around the town. One evening we volunteered to work at the local university at an english class so the students could hear native speakers. It was pretty easy, and everyone in the class wanted to know what Aaron thought of Colombian women. Aaron told them all that I was probably more impressed than he was. Finally, we packed up our stuff and headed to the train station to take an overnight bus to Bogota. The unforeseen problem was that the Colombian national soccer team was scheduled to play in Bogota that weekend, so all tickets were booked until the next morning. So, we ended up one more night sleeping in the dodgy hostel at the bus terminal and left early the next morning for the big city life once again.