JARDIN (Antioquia). Coffee Country. 72 470 Km

Making the most of short trips from Medellin, we headed south into the coffee region of Colombia to the town of Jardin for a few days. One of the reasons that we chose this town is that it retains a lot of it's traditional buildings and layout of town but also it doesn't see a lot of international tourism. There are some bigger towns on the tourist trail but we will come back to those later.

On our first afternoon we took the local cable car up one of the smaller hills in town to get an overall feel for it. As you can see in the photo above the town itself is relatively small but in the hills all around are numerous farms and they continue for miles.

Unexpectedly we found a Jesus statue waiting for us on the top of the hill but better yet we found a small open-air restaurant and bar where we could sit for a while and just watch the world go by.

The ominous looking clouds in the photo above turned into some pretty heavy going rain that put a dampener on our plans to wander through town for the rest of afternoon. Instead we went back to our little farm house and planned for a horse ridding trip to the coffee farms for the following day.

The next morning the hostel owner drove us up one of the nearby hills where we met out horses and guide and off we went deep into the farm region. For the next 1.5hrs we rode through all kinds of dirt, grass, mud, and streams passing farm after farm. Eventually we arrived at a spot where we could make a small hike to see a waterfall. The coolest part about it was going through a massive tunnel at the base of a tree to get there!

After our trip to the waterfall our guide pulled out some traditional working lunch for us. No lunch boxes needed, the whole meal is wrapped in 2 banana leaves and as well as it being secure enough to contain the rice and other bits, the food was still warm several hours after it was cooked.

By the time we arrived back in town it was getting late in the day but we had enough light and good weather to stroll around the main plaza. From here we went down to the river to an eco-reserve to see if we could get a look at the "cock of the rock"

And success we had. "The Cock of the Rock" is a bird that is meant to be common in Andes areas of Ecuador and Colombia but we hadn't seen any yet. There were tons here though. In fact there were so many of these birds we weren't sure where to look first.

On our final morning we left our farm stay to walk further away from town and go searching for more waterfalls. The town had already abruptly given way to bigger properties by the time we were at our farm stay but it was perfect just being able to go for a wander away from town for a little while.

Eventually we needed to return back to Medellin. On our arrival back at the bus station we were reminded once again how much Colombia loves looking after kids. We have seen activities, and play grounds, and pop-up stuff for kids in shopping centres and parks everywhere. This time, in the main bus terminal, we found a giant blow up snow globe where kids can climb inside and feel like it's snowing around them.