Salento is a great place.

The hostels and the restaurants are very simple and mainly cater to backpackers (guess I’m one of them again! oh youth!) but the town is pretty and surrounded by amazing nature.

Salento is mainly a square with a church and four streets raying out of it, a view point (mirador) and one hundred restaurants that aren’t bad but also nothing special.

The point of being in Salento is the proximity to the Cocora valley and the fact that in a less than a whole day you can enjoy an amazing hike and time in nature.

I took the ‘jeep’ from the main square like everyone else. The way you do it you line up at this little wooden booth, you pay 8,000COP (return ticket) and as soon as one jeeps is full, it leaves. They have dozens of jeeps with built in seats-benches facing each other and a platform hanging right at the back where they get 2 or 3 people standing!

The ride to the entrance is 20 minutes, the hike, if you are willing to do the whole “loop” that is between 5-6 hours. I did the whole loop and highly recommend it now.

It wasn’t crowded so I enjoyed the peace, the silence, the green hills, the tallest wax palm trees, the humming birds…

the detour (a 20 minutes uphill) to the Acaime natural reserve is also very worth it!

The entrance fee (a 5,000 COP) gets you a coffee or a chocolate that you can enjoy while watching the humming birds flying faster than the light into the little watering holes suspended in the trees..try catching them in a slow motion video, They are cute, colourful and really really fast!

The biggest instagram opportunity of the hike is definitely the view of the wax palm trees, especially when standing tall against the big deep valleys or when submerging from the mist of the lower plains.

I love you Cocora valley, I do!