Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Gunpowder and Beer!

Salento was a beautiful but tiny town in the middle of the coffee region, my first day was spent visiting two local coffee farms. The first, run by Don Ellas (both were run by 'Don's') was very small and little more than an extension of his back garden and we wandered around looking at not just the coffee plants but pineapple bushes, banana trees, blackberries, fish pond and family pig; whilst he picked the few beans that were red and ripe. He then showed us the machine which strips the beans of their skins and the 'drying room' or rather sheet of polythene hung over a patio. The second, run by Don Raul (i couldn't say that without raising a smile) was much bigger and alot more as i imagined a coffee farm to look like; afterwards we were treated to a cup each and then, predictably enough, invited to buy some.
That evening a few of us from the hostel headed into town to play a local game named Tejo. The game involves a large crate packed with clay to be placed at either end of the playing area (about as long as a cricket green), in the centre of the clay is a metal ring and on the metal ring packets of gunpowder are placed. The aim of the game is to throw metal weights at the clay filled box and either to land in the centre of the metal ring or to make the gunpowder explode! This is the traditional game played by men in columbia (more interesting than darts or pool i think) as is obviously accompanied by copious amounts of beer. It was great fun to watch and after a couple of beers ourselves we decided to have a go, we soon found ourselves surrounded by locals offering advice on our throwing technique but really just having a laugh at us. i was totally rubbish and failed to hit even the crate with most of my throws and so after a while we were relagated to the half size or kiddie court (oh, the embarrasment!)
My second day i went to the nearby valley of Cocora, which is home to the largest palm trees in the world- they were the biggest (and weirdly, skinnest) trees i have ever ever seen in my life, i felt like i was in the world of giants- it was really cool. I had gone to the valley with several others form the hostel and so we were able to negotiate a good price for horses and spent the day riding amongst these enormous trees looking at the tropical flowers and watching the many humming birds and of course racing each other.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope you had a brill birthday Katie !

Not sure if you're still in Salento, but whilst I was googling it to see what delights it held for you, I found this:
http://journals.worldnomads.com/willlou

You could get some ideas of where to go and what to see ... there's some good stuff on there. xx

10:17 AM  

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