Salento 1-day itinerary

Take a Willys Jeep from Salento's main plaza (departures every 30 minutes from 6am) for the bumpy 30-minute ride to Valle de Cocora. Hike the 12km loop trail through cloud forest and open valley to stand among the tallest palm trees on Earth — Colombia's national tree, the Quindio wax palm (Ceroxylon quindiuense), reaches up to 60 metres and grows only above 2,000m altitude. The mist-shrouded valley floor with hundreds of these impossibly tall, slender palms rising from bright green pastureland is one of South America's most surreal and photogenic landscapes.

Return to Salento and join an afternoon coffee farm tour at Finca El Ocaso, Don Elias, or Las Acacias. Walk through the coffee plantation at 1,900m altitude where Arabica beans grow under shade trees, learning the full bean-to-cup process: picking ripe red cherries by hand, wet processing to remove the fruit, sun-drying on raised beds, and roasting in a wood-fired drum. The Coffee Triangle (Eje Cafetero) produces some of the world's finest mild Arabica, and tasting a freshly roasted cup at the farm where it was grown is a completely different experience from anything you've had before.

Spend the evening on Salento's colourful main plaza — Plaza de Bolivar — where locals and travellers gather on the steps to watch the sunset paint the surrounding green mountains gold. The town's colonial houses are painted in vivid blues, yellows, reds, and greens with ornate balconies overflowing with flowers. Eat trucha (rainbow trout) at one of the plaza-side restaurants — farmed in the cold mountain rivers of the Quindio region, it's served grilled with patacones (fried plantain), coconut rice, and a simple salad. Try the local aguardiente or a fresh lulo juice.