The middle-aged gap year diarys: Further adventures in the world of tight trousers

There are certain things that have become apparent as we have traveled around Colombia, one of which is that every woman wears incredibly tight trousers, we wondered how they managed to put them on; had Colombian women invented spray on jeans or was their a special dressing station or what? We asked Sol who said that plastic bags were utilized to aid friction. I'll be honest and say that this is a fashion I am able to live with.

Secondly the country must be run by mathematicians, everything is numbered, firstly the buildings with their totally ordered street system, and the cars and cabs all have a reg number a cab number a drivers number. You get onto a bus and as it leaves the station the number of people on board is written down and given to a guy on the bus station gate, we then drive out of town and just as you leave there is a post where the bus stops and a man comes on board to check that the number the bus driver says he has on board is correct. Nowhere in Latin America are there always kilometer posts at every kilometer.. An out of town address has a nearest km post address.

We left Medellin and headed south into the Zona Cafe, which is as you would expect where the coffee comes from, a land of high green hills and fertile valleys. Our first stop was the town of Armenia, which at least is easy to spell and remember! Outside of which was a very nice nature park full of wonderful palm trees, butterflys and hummingbirds.

And Bamboo!

There was a high tower built to look over the park... Guess what was in the building below!

We liked this collection of bamboo roots pretending they were triffids!

We moved on to the very small and very beautiful town of Salento.

A very quiet and small place high in the coffee zone where they have managed to keep some prime forest.

We also had a superbly enjoyable night out playing what is indisputably the best pub game ever invented. Known as Cancha de Tejo this is the most fun you can have at a throwing game.

Here is Liza laughing as I throw a 1kg metal disk about 9 meters at a clay board in the hope that it sticks...or preferably.....

Hits one of the small white triangles which are sitting on a circle of metal embedded in the clay. These packets are filled with gunpowder! Yep you score 1 point if you are nearest, 3 if you get one to explode and a total bullseye will set off all four and score you 12 points! You soon don't care about the score, you just want to make things explode.

When we had finally finished blowing things up, it was really raining so as we were very hungry were prepared to order food from the bar, they had a menu but it was run by Victor & Paulo, both around 20 years old, no kitchen in sight. They said of course we could order food, we did so and Victor immediately phoned his mum. Within about 10 minutes one of the nicest trout dishes, in a superb white sauce showed up.

You did not even have to leave the bar to go to the mens urinal either!

Our real reason for going to Salento was to walk the Valle de Cocora... a stunning days walk even if a little muddy.

As you go up the valley the farm land gives way to cloud forest.

The previous nights rain had made the ground very wet and slippy, the river full and as the path wound up the valley we had to cross the river seven times on the most rickety bridges we have seen since Laos.

At the top of the valley there was a rangers station where they fed the hummingbirds, this long tailed variety was one we had not seen before.

We hadn't seen one of these critteres before either!

After the rangers station it is straight up the valley side up a long zig zag path with about a 350m climb to excellent views over the cloud forest.

And then take a gentle descent down to our starting point.

Through forests of Wax Palm, Colombia's native tree which are stupidly tall, these are at least 50m and they apparently grow much taller.... I am not sure how they can without falling over in the slightest breeze.

We left Salento and headed for Manizales, a much bigger town which used to be a mining town, and is high in the Zona Cafe, it's mayors welcome note in the tourist brochure says the clouds hug you in the towns warmth!

We landed just as Colombia kicked off against Ecuador in a world cup qualifier which turned the town into a party and meant that there was not a restaurant that was not packed out with cheering Colombians (they won 1-0). We bought food from the supermarket and headed to the hostal kitchen!