When you think of Colombia and its exports, I guarantee that cocaine and coffee will come to mind. After visiting the home of cocaine (Medellín), I headed south to Manizales to find out more about Colombia's (second) most famous export, and this time to experience some free samples.

The weather in Manizales was just as rainy as Medellín, and my dreams of bright and dunny Colombian skies were starting to fade. The hostel I stayed in fortunately had a massive TV and X Box; and for the evening, a jacuzzi to keep the guests entertained. On the morning I went to a nearby coffee plantation - Hacienda Venecia - the sun finally came out to play.

A jeep with not quite enough space for everyone came to pick us up first thing, and we drove around 30 minutes into the depths of the beautifully green coffee region. Upon arrival we sampled some fantastic coffee - something that surprisingly you do not get to drink much of here in Colombia, as the good stuff is mainly exported in order to preserve the worldwide reputation of Colombian coffee.

Once we were all caffeined-up and awake, we were each given a pile of coffee beans to split into good and bad. We popped the good ones in the roaster, and set the bad ones aside for Nescafe! Whilst the beans were roasting, we examined the wide selection of aromas that are sometimes added to their coffee, and some of them were quite bizarre... my personal favourite weird one was cucumber. As soon as the roaster was ready, we snacked on the roasted beans and it took me right back to being a kid on holiday in Spain when my sister and I used to have coffee bean sweets. Mmmmm, scrumptious!

Next up was a walk to and through the coffee plantations. I had never seen coffee growing before, so it was an interesting day out for me to learn the whole process right from the planting stage through to the finished product. As a bonus we also got to see a couple of peacocks wandering the grounds looking very pretty. By the time we had finished the tour, a storm had set in, and had caused a powercut. This meant that unfortunately we never for our second coffee sample :-(

After waiting for a while for the rain to subside/the power to return, we gave up and drove back t Manizales in the storm. Although it was short and sweet, I enjoyed my stay in the coffee region of Colombia, and would recommend anyone to come here.