Reflections, A Colombia Blog

For those of you old enough, remember Mrs. Olson of Folger's Coffee fame?  She advised - with her generic "European" accent - her young (always white) female neighbors to brew (i.e., percolate) Folger's coffee for their men, because it was "mountain grown, that's the richest kind."  Well, turns out Mrs. Olson spoke some truth! At least in the context of Colombia, its most famous and prolific coffee region is indeed in the mountains, wedged at around 6000' between the western and central spines of the Andes.  We spent about a week in this beautiful area, rich not only in coffee but also natural abundance ... unique high altitude forests and rushing mountain-fed rivers and the ecosystems they support. Coffee is, of course, not from the Western Hemisphere, originally "discovered" in East Africa.  So how did it get to the Americas?  Well, we heard one story of how coffee became a Colombia "thing."  Goes like this: Italian Jesuit pries...

The shortest transit of our trip was the one-hour drive from Cali to Araucana Lodge nestled in a palm and bamboo grove of the Western Andes range.  This boutique lodge was established by Christopher and Vivian, American and Colombian, respectively, on a finca originally purchased by his grandparents in the 1950s as a retreat from city life.  Besides the lodge, the finca grows organic vegetables, fruit, flowers, and coffee and employs a small army of locals.  Christopher's father started and still runs a nursery business on site. The lodge's meals were excellent and the rooms spacious and comfortable.  Among our fellow lodgers was a group of 8 or so hyper-serious birders (we could tell by the long and intense evening debates about what they saw and by they early early departures each morning) and a lower-key trio from northern Ontario with whom we had more relaxed conversations. The lush interior garden of the Araucana lodge The view from one of the lodge's common are...

 We flew from Cartagena to Cali … yes, Cali of the bad narco-reputation, but no longer.  It’s a bustling city on the Cauca River, the second largest river of Colombia, the southernmost point of our trip, and most importantly, the center of the salsa universe.  We were slightly more than halfway through our itinerary, and I think we’d hit a bit of a stride.  We’d gotten comfortable with our agency-coordinated mode of travel, the Spanish had become more familiar if not more understandable, and the anxieties we’d had about travel had moderated.  On the other hand, by the time we left Cartagena, we’d become clear about our limitations - the extent to which heat and humidity sapped our energy, the fatigue induced by long drives on winding, rough roads, just the psychic need for down-time. We were in Cali for only 2 days, really a way-station between touristy Cartagena and a focused birding experience in the hills above Cali.  We had a “city tour” planned for our...