Parque Nacional del Cafe, Montenegro, Colombia

It's a long weekend here (today is one of those Catholic holidays), so on Saturday the "gringos" went to the one place everyone always tells us to go and the one place none of us had ever been: Parque Nacional del Cafe. I haven't mentioned it much before, but since the beginning of Term 3 there have been 5 American teachers at LPV (previously there were 3, me, Warren, and Ben, who teaches high school English). We very occasionally do activities as a group (bars, food, parties, etc.), and for whatever reason, we decided to tackle Parque del Cafe as a group of gringos instead of asking a Colombian friend to help us out.

What that means is that we took the wrong bus and probably spent too much money, but we also had a great time.

Parque Nacional del Cafe is literally a theme park dedicated to coffee and the coffee-growing spirit of Colombia. The rides are not exactly thrilling, but the landscape is beautiful and we saw an enjoyable "Show del Cafe" that featured traditional dances, music, and costumes. It was a good day and we had fun, especially after we returned to Pereira and ate at one of the only restaurants in PEI that I can recommend for vegans--Kilaba. (It's an Arabic restaurant across from Pepe Ganga on Circunvalar. Decent hummus and falafel.) Anyway, I've outlined my advice for Parque Nacional del Cafe below. Hope it's helpful!

1. To get there, DO NOT take the Expreso Alcala bus that says it goes directly to Parque del Cafe. It is a lie. It goes on the back roads to Montenegro, and then you need to take a bus, taxi, or Jeep Willys to get to Parque del Cafe. INSTEAD, take a bus to Armenia (there are a lot of express buses to Armenia from both Cali and Pereira). Once you arrive, you can arrange to take a Willys, taxi, or bus to Parque del Cafe. I imagine a bus is the cheapest way, but due to Expreso Alcala's false advertising, we went the wrong way there and took a Jeep Willys from Montenegro. The Jeep ride cost us 8,000 pesos total from Montenegro. A taxi was apparently 7,000, but we didn't fit in a taxi, and we didn't feel like finding a bus. A taxi TO Armenia from the park was 20,000 and a Jeep was 25,000.
On our first jeep:
2. Once you arrive, you have a lot of choices when it comes to buying a ticket. We had planned to do the "7 aventuras" ticket, but when we arrived our group decided to do the "multiple" ticket instead, which was more expensive but included everything. My advice is this: if you have all day, especially during the week, and also if you like horses, go for the multiple ticket. If you don't have all day (We had less than 6 hours) and you don't care if you ride the horses or not, go for "7 aventuras." Remember you will waste a lot of time standing in lines for the rides and/or shows. If you want to skip the rides and just walk around the park, you could definitely do that. It's also possible to pay for the various attractions when you do them.

3. What to do: Take the teleferico down to the main part of the park OR walk down the hill through the "Forests of Myths and Legends." Enjoy the rides but don't expect Six Flags roller coasters. Make sure you spend a substantial amount of time just wandering through the park, because it is quite beautiful. I think the park itself is much cooler than the rides. Also, make sure you see the "Show del Cafe." It's not exactly Broadway, but it was fun and I enjoyed it. The show is about an hour; make sure you are in line at least 30 minutes before the doors open. Apparently the museum is a bit lame; we didn't have time to go in so I can't personally attest to this. The teleferico and coffee fields below:


4. Food: There are restaurants outside of the park and inside the park. Snacks and drinks were not marked up inside the park, and you could bring small food items inside in a purse/backpack. Apparently the park serves good food, but all I had was juice, popcorn, and cotton candy. Those were all good though!

5. Leaving: To leave, we took a Willy to Armenia's bus terminal and then hopped onto a direct bus to Pereira. Definitely easy. The bus cost 7,700 pesos and the Jeep was 25,000 for 5 of us. A taxi would be cheaper (and warmer) but as I said before, we didn't fit.

Overall impressions: I think Parque del Cafe is a good stop in Colombia if you have time and you don't mind going a bit out of the way for it, as it is not really close to anything. It isn't cheap, so try to spend the entire day there to get your money's worth. Personally, I'm glad I took my family to a real coffee finca instead of Parque del Cafe. It's a nice place, but the coffee finca was more authentic (and cheaper). Parque del Cafe is a nice place to spend a day though, and it is a very safe and easy option for tourists. Almost all the signs were translated into decent English, and it was definitely geared for mass tourism.

I know I'm supposed to write more about veganism, and I'll try to this week, but we've been busy so I can't promise anything. Sorry!

A Weekend at the Finca

So today, we are going to the finca. A finca is a country home, and in Colombia almost everyone with money has a finca and an apartment in the city. It's totally normal. I'm definitely guessing here, but I think that this comes from the fact that during the violent periods in Colombia, it was too dangerous to live on a farm. Farm owners here do have money, especially compared to the poor, and the FARC or paramilitaries would kidnap the land-owners for money to support their causes. The farmers were told it wasn't safe for them, so many of them abandoned their farms and moved to the cities. Now, their lives take place in the city--this is where their children grew up, this is where the best schools are, and this is where their friends are. Of course, as any good Midwestern girl knows, you can move a farmer to the city, but you can't stop them from thinking and talking about the farm. (If you doubt this, please talk to my Uncle Jerry, who only spent his summers on a farm but wants to be a farmer when he grows up. He is almost 50.) So now that it is safe, people are either going back to their farms or buying homes in the country. I don't blame them--the countryside in the Eje de Cafetera (Coffee Zone) is beautiful.

We are going to Stella's finca. We've been there before, briefly, and it is beautiful. I'm looking forward to grilling, relaxing in the jacuzzi, and drinking Stella's famous coconut limonade (lime-ade). It's made with coconut cream (she gets hers from Thailand because it is creamier than the coconut cream from Colombia), rum, lime juice, and ice. Let's just say it's the most delicious beverage I've ever had.

Monday is a holiday, and we are going to El Parque del Cafe, which is sort of like an amusement park dedicated to coffee.

This is our last weekend in Pereira. A week from now, we should be in Cartagena, and we'll be home on July 1. It's strange because I feel like we've just started to get settled in Colombia. I'm learning the roads, and my Spanish has drastically improved. I think we've also become better teachers.

When I got sick a few weeks ago, I became homesick. I stayed homesick until we returned from Bogota, where I was definitely more homesick than I've ever been. It's funny--the only time I ever got homesick when I studied abroad was when I spent a week in Prague, another city I didn't enjoy. Coming back to Pereira was wonderful, and now I'm not ready to leave. I love summers in the United States, and I'm excited we'll be back for the 4th of July, but I've really learned to love Colombia and all the people here, and it will be hard to leave them.

I hope everyone is well. I know I owe a lot of people emails--I haven't forgotten any of you! Despite what sounds like luxurious weekends, we really do work hard here, and during the week it is hard to find time to do anything but sleep. (Okay, fine, I also watch Family Guy with subtitles. The selection of television shows here is a little depressing, but sometimes I just need to do something mindless.) I'll do my best to email you before we leave, but if I don't manage it I promise you'll hear from me the first week we are back in the States!