The coffee region
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
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53
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Trip End
Dec 10, 2009
Manizales, Colombia
Saturday, March 7, 2009
There was little to do in the city itself (highest church steeple in S.Am....zzz...), but there were options for interesting day trips in the surrounding (stunning) countryside. Having heard the trip up a nearby mountain was more about riding in a 4x4 than hiking, i decided to head out to a coffee farm in XXXX.
The coffee tour was pretty interesting, our guide likable and the lunch afterwards the best i´ve had in months. An underlying theme was that despite the fact that Colombia produces some of the world´s best coffee, none stays there for domestic consumption. At every stage of the process the market. And through ´ignorance is bliss´, barely anybody here knows what a good cuppa tastes like - and thus it is impossible to find one without paying through the nose in some tourist hangout.
Ultimately, there is much to interest a weekender in Manizales but little for a traveller. Off to somewhere else in the coffee region i go. Solento.
