This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
In the center-west of Colombia, the Coffee Triangle is a charming region where rurality rhymes with authenticity, where the mountains are worthy of a land of plenty and where lively villages emerge from the vast coffee estates. Incursion into a peaceful place imbued with great beauty.
Seventeen years ago, Omar Betancur had to flee his home in Salento in the middle of the night with his wife and children aged three and five. “The FARC had just attacked the police station and it was better not to stay nearby to avoid getting hit by a stray bullet,” says the Colombian in his fifties.
Eight years after the peace accords, the cute plaza in front of the same police station is bustling with travelers and unaffected by the presence of any revolutionaries. The iconic Willys jeeps no longer carry guerrillas, but happy visitors, and Omar Betancur, now a tour guide, still lives in his house in his cheerful mountain town.
The dark years of Colombia’s armed conflict seem a long time ago. We walk along the terraces of the pretty streets of Salento and see Colombians downing a cold beer or sipping a latte while chatting about everything and nothing.
Now Colombia’s premier coffee city is just as popular with foreigners, who love its brightly colored facades, placid sombrero-wearing locals and some of the best coffee in the world.
A well-filled triangle
Bounded by three cities (Pereira, Manizales and Armenia) of three departments (Risaralda, Caldas and Quindio), the Coffee Triangle (or Axis) brings together villages with multi-colored facades (such as the lively Filandia), green valleys (such as the enchanting Cocora Valley and its wax palms) and gentle peaks with their heads buried in the clouds.
Among all these attractions lie millions of coffee trees on the smallest plot of land, whether in a valley or at high altitude, where the wind refreshes and the rain invigorates.
In fact, the Eje Cafetero was so shaped by coffee culture that UNESCO included it on its list of intangible cultural heritage as the “Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia.” And since then, many farms and haciendas (more or less large estates) open their doors and their plantations to visitors.
Caffeinated tours
At Hacienda Venecia, near Manizales, the energetic guide Johann Alexis Martinez seems to have fallen into a giant coffee pot when he was little, so permanent do the effects of caffeine seem to be on him. Each visit to his plantation allows you to discover the process that leads from bean to cup, but also the ABCs of fair trade of the powerful black nectar.
Here, as elsewhere in the region, the volcanic soil is so rich and the weather alternates so often between rain and sun that there are two harvests per year. “And if Colombian coffee is so good, it’s because it’s all Arabica and it’s always picked by hand,” explains Johann Alexis Martinez. This ensures that each bean harvested is perfectly ripe, when it reaches that beautiful red hue – or even burgundy, the optimum quality.
Hacienda Venecia also boasts a century-old home so inviting that you can sleep soundly even after drinking three liters of coffee. But slumping down on a sofa or hammock on its veranda to watch the hummingbirds while sipping soursop juice is just as reassuring, with or without caffeine in your blood.
A nature of great beauty
To release excess energy, the Coffee Triangle also includes a resplendent environment of mountains just waiting to be climbed. This country is one of the most megadiverse on the planet, with 314 ecosystems recorded.
In the Los Nevados National Natural Park, impeccable ribbons of asphalt allow for panoramic climbs and breathtaking descents by bike. And this, while treks and hikes take place against a backdrop of dormant volcanoes (the iconic Tolima, 5215 m) or not (the turbulent Nevado del Ruiz, 5321 m).
Then, beneath the telluric cover of the region, torrents of very hot thermal waters gurgle, gushing from the earth into as many pools where it is good to dip your bottom after a day of effort.
Life, life
An archetype of Colombian rurality, the Coffee Triangle also lives to the languid rhythm of large, unpretentious towns, such as Santa Rosa de Cabal. Its public market overflows with herbs, vegetables and especially fruit, in a country where you can bite into a different one every day of the year. Its cafés and pastry shops, such as the adorable Pastelaria, offer tasty sweet delights to the sound of Colombian bolero performances.
In Manizales, the city stretches along the top of a ridge, its steep streets tumbling down into valleys covered in coffee trees. Here you can enjoy a cappuccino in the cathedral bell tower (at the Tazzioli café) or listen to legends while tasting succulent specialties inspired by as many Colombian regions (at the brilliant La Beautiful restaurant).
You can also attend the last bullfights held in the country (their abolition is announced for 2027) or, better still, do as the Colombians do and sit peacefully in urban parks to aimlessly watch time pass.
Time that now passes here under the aegis of an ever-renewed optimism, after decades of tumult and animosity.
The author was a guest of Procolombia.
This content was produced by the Special Publications Team of Dutyrelevant to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part in it.