La Victoria Coffee Factory

Colombia is famous for coffee, and Minca hosts several coffee farms. One of them, la Victoria, uses equipment that is 120 years old. It's a real old fashioned family operation. They have about 300 planted acres in the hills above Santa Marta in the Sierra Nevada. We took a car up in to the jungle to get a tour. It costs around 3 usd to get the tour.


A little bridge leads to the place.


We learned about the long and complicated process of coffee production from this guide. Lucky for us, there was a Colombian American in the group who translated for us.



The place was pretty quiet because coffee picking season is from November to February. Coffee pickers barely get 2 bucks for filling up a box the size of a carry on suitcase. Amazing especially when you consider that we pay 2 bucks for a cup of coffee at home. There is something to be said for the fair trade ideology!





The factory was made of old worn wood and chunky machinery. It reminded us of the movie Hugo.


It's an organic coffee farm so the husks all go into a worm compost bin. This bin was crawling with red worms making compost.



There was a cool 100 year old working phone that the factory still uses.





This part sorts the beans by size into three grades. The biggest and best beans are sold exclusively for export. I am not sure what grades are sold in town but naturally we bought some to bring home. It's likely the worst grade, and I could probably buy better coffee at Costco.


The finished product comes out the chute and into the bag. The finale was eclipsed by meeting yet another dog.


No coffee factory tour would be complete without an enticing free sample at the end. I am pretty sure this cup is sugar with a bit of coffee!



We had fun on the trip back into town taking pictures. The driver didn't seem to care he many times we asked him stop.





You can't really tell from this photo, but from this vantage point y can see all the way down to Santa Marta with the Caribbean ocean in the background. Right next to this photo stop is shack of a place that is hosted by an amicable old guy whose real name isn't known by anyone, he just goes by Cararita.


Luis isn't one to pass up a good sausage, especially a chorizo. He made us a quick plate of simple food.


A few tostones, potatoes, and chorizo that Luis said was the best he'd ever had.

Casa Santander in Minca, Colombia

We have been in Minca for 4 days now, doing a different activity each day. River swimming is the main attraction here. Of course our sweet hotel, Casa Santander, is perched right on the river side.



A porch with hammocks face the river.


View from the garden to the river. The hotel caretaker, Rafa, is on the far right. A helpful and quiet sort of guy but he only speaks Spanish. Sometimes he is away for hrs at a time, which makes us feel as though this is our own place,which we kinda like. So far though we have been able to get our needs met. The hotel was spotless when we arrived. Although accommodation in Minca is more expensive than I anticipated, I think we are getting one of the better values in town. There are some backpacker places like Casa Lo Minca and Villa Silvia that cost about the same but we have this place, which feels more like a family summer vacation home, all to ourselves. We are paying 85,000 cop for all 4 of us, which is around 48 usd.









When Luis scouted out the hotel he came back with this report "there's bunk beds, hammocks, and a puppy". Of course the kids were sold on the puppy as the main reason why we should stay there.


We also have use of the kitchen, so I have prepared a few meals to save money.



Of course Maya was a big help. She and i have enjoyed sourcing our meals from several markets in town. Especially fun is a trip to the avocado dealer.



The house has rooms of avocados in various stages of ripeness and size. We watched machete toting rubber boot wearing boys around jacks age come to the house with a donkey carrying a huge sack of just picked from the forest avocados. These boys looked like they worked hard all day. If our family travels leave just one impression on the kids I hope with all my heart that they feel down to their soul that they live a charmed life.

On another visit to the avocado mecca there was a puppy, which extended our time there to about a half an hour.



We made a sort of a soup with pasta, sausage, peppers, carrots, and onion. Avocados are plentiful here so we made a nice plate with tomatoes and lime juice squeezed over it. Not my best meal but is was a fourth of the price of a restaurant meal.





Enjoying a family meal on the back porch.


And finally, jack enjoys his first cup of coffee!

Minca is a tourist Mecca

We had to work pretty hard to get here-a 6:30 am taxi to the bus station, a 5 hour bus to Santa Marta, another taxi from the Santa Marta bus station to 'el mercado' on the outskirts of the city to the 'estacion de Minca' where we found a driver going to Minca that would give us a ride. We were starved by the time we arrived at the estacion de Minca so we decided to wak around huffing our packs looking for something to eat. For blocks all around all we could see were fish markets and auto repair shops. We walked back to the estacion hotter and hungrier. Our car was there waiting for us so we just got a quick limeade from a vendor and got in the car.




This little hunk of junk barely made its way up the mountainside for the 30 minute potholed unpaved ride. The engine was so hot that we actually cooled off when we got out of the car. Minca is a hillside river town where it is noticeably cooler than the coast, one of the reasons we came.
Who knew? Minca is incredibly popular with Colombians on the weekend. Yesterday was Sunday and there were so many people here the streets were jammed with people and cars. And by streets I actually mean just one, there is just a main road and a few smaller roads going off of it. Shops, restaurants, and a church line the street.
We went into the first restaurant we saw, and it turned out to be pretty good. They had tamales, but not like the tamales we think of in Mexican places at home. These were banana leaf packets of food.




Unwrap it and there is cooked rice, beans, meat-chicken in this one- , a slice of carrot and a slice of potato. It was really tasty. We liked it so much that the next day we went back for another one at lunch time. This time the meat looked like a variety of meat, and looked unfamiliar, which causes me to immediately put it on Luis plate. When he ate it he said, oh I think I just ate an organ. Ok, lots of people like organ meats but the even the thought of organ meats makes me feel sick. I lost my appetite a little and asked him not to say it too loud in front of the kids, because I was pretty sure they wouldn't eat it after that.




Our hotel is Hotel Santander, which Luis found by walking around the town while we waited at the restaurant with the packs. Minca is not an economical place to stay, we are actually paying more for this room that we did in Cartagena. It's a pretty good place though, we are the only guests here, and it is right on the river so the kids can step out the door and swim. Food here is also pricy, almost double of what we paid in Cartagena. That's what we get for going to a town that attracts tourists, of the colombian variety anyway. We have seen 3 or 4 backpackers here but haven't made the effort to talk to them.




Just outside the door is a lovely river to swim in.




There is a restaurant next door where they put the table right in the river.








The water is freezing as it comes down from the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Not easy to enjoy a cup of coffee knee deep in cold running water.

One more day in Cartagena

We just had to spend one more day in this beautiful city. This morning Maya said that yesterday was one of the best days of her life! And what's not to love about cobblestone streets and colonial buildings?





We toured the big fort today which offered great views of the area and best of all a network of tunnels connecting different areas of the fort. Super creepy, claustrophobic and fun!
















The heat in this city, especially at the top of the fort is about the most intense I have experienced. A lot like North Carolina turned up a few notches.




There's always a way to cool down, usually in the form of a street vendor selling icy cold cups of limeade. So good!



All three nights we have gone to the main plaza to watch these incredible dancers and musicians. Sure, they are there for the tourist, but they are really good and fun to watch!



Cartagena is a great city for a vacation. There is so much to do, see, and eat!



This vendor sells all kinds of empanadas and other fried savory things that I don't know the name of. His stand was especially popular because of the buckets of condiments available. You put a dollop of any kind of sauce on your empanada with each bite. We just stood there eating one after another with several other people.






We did quite a bit of walking and you can probably tell by Maya's posture that she was getting really tired. I could walk all day and soak up the atmosphere but the kids tire of it quickly and liken the experience to a forced march.



The view from the top of the city walls.



Cartagena is packed with tourists, some Europeans, but it mostly seemed like Colombians.



Our plan is to leave for Minca in the morning. We will make our way by taxi to the bus station and look for a bus to Santa Marta. The ride should be about 5 hours. From Santa Marta we take a shared car to the small mountain village of Minca, which is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range which is the highest coastal mountain range in the world. Unbelievably, given the heat in Cartagena, the mountains are snow capped!

I heart Cartagena

Seriously I do! For someone who is always trying to find the most 'off the beaten path' destinations I have seriously fallen for the charm of Cartagena. Colonial balconies draped in Bougainvillea, traditional dancers in the plaza, cobblestone streets, horse drawn carriages. It's so perfect looking it doesn't even seem real.

We are staying at Hotel La Magdalena, it's not in the LP which is why there are no other backpacker types here. Just Colombians. We booked it through booking.com which was super easy. We are paying 42usd per night, and wee seem to have the nicest room in the place. It's clean, quiet, safe, the staff are super nice, and most important of all the room has AC. There are 6 single beds in the room so there is plenty of space.



Clean and quiet, just the way we like it. No backpackers and no DJ in the lobby.


For those of you who like to know what the facilities are like. The shower is a stream of cool water much like a hose attached thru the wall. But we dont really care.

We had a lovely first meal at Sabor Mulato yesterday afternoon.
















We had two fresh fish dishes, a pork dish, 3 fresh juices (pineapple, mango, and lulo) and a water for 19 usd. The food was delish. Lunch is our splurge meal. For breakfast and dinner we eat street food which saves us significant money.










Sausages, empanadas, and rice boiled in a corn husk for dinner cost 6 usd for all of us! Breakfast this morning was even better.




Two fresh strawberry juices, two coffees, and two chicken potato empanadas for 3 bucks. Muy bueno.

And of course these trips find us adopting an all you can drink soda attitude.






We are getting an early start this morning to be tourists. Usually we fly into the major city and get the heck out as soon as possible, but theres a bunch of cool things to see here so we are going to stay a day or so and then move on.

Preparing for Colombia

After months of indecision, we finally purchased tickets for our summer adventure. We are going to Colombia for three weeks. This was an agonizing process for me this year and I went round and round in my head and with friends about where to go.

Champagne problems indeed.





I write this post from my beautiful backyard hesitantly thinking that it's so nice right here! Why go anywhere? Why go through all the time, energy, and money to slog around Colombia for three weeks? Maybe I will know the answer to that when we get there.

Am I growing out of the need to travel? Is what I wanted for my life as a twenty something completely different from what I want for my life as a forty something? That really freaks me out because I have built a lifestyle and career around the concept of taking my family on mega international trips every summer. Why do I feel content to listen to the birds and admire my hydrangeas?

One theory I have is that by this time of the school year I am completely burned out and all I ever want to do is stare into space and veg out. A mistake I made this year was waiting until the last minute to decide. As the school year went on I became less and less interested in doing anything, especially mustering up all my senses to backpack. My son wanted to go back to the idyllic beaches of the DR, and I almost agreed....but I felt like that would be wimping out. Plus Luis said we hadn't been to enough places yet to start back tracking.

We wanted to go to Colombia last summer, after meeting people in Peru that said how great it was. But the kids were adamant that we go someplace relaxing, a place that wasn't like "work" as they said. And Peru was hard. The bus trips were epic and nauseous. City streets were crowded. I suspect Colombia won't be much different.

We have a route planned that will keep us away from big cities. We fly into Cartagena from Myrtle Beach. The tickets, including paying for carry on bags on Spirit Airlines, were 725 usd each. Not cheap at all, but definitely the best I found anywhere.

We made our first night hostel reservation at Hotel La Magdalena in Cartagena paying 41 usd. The next day we will head out on our loop to Minca, Valledupar, Mompos, and Tolu. I haven't decided if we will go to Minca or Tolu first though. On the back end of the trip in Cartagena we will certainly splurge on a room with a pool like we did last year.

So there you have it. Tickets purchased for Colombia!

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It's nearly time

It's getting close!  In a few weeks the year will have turned and I will feel justified in beginning to think about and plan where we will go this summer.  The planning and dreaming will sustain me as I climb the last weeks to the peak of the school year.

That's the problem with winter break, it feels like the midway point and it should be the half way mark of the school year, but it isn't.  It is actually the hell that is the last few paces as I crawl, on bloodied knuckles over jagged rocks littered with the bodies of the fallen,  to the summit of misery.  Its the time where I am certain I will not survive the weeks and months ahead.  Its where I cry for no reason, slam doors, laugh at inappropriate times, render myself generally ineffective, embarrass myself with my cynical attitude,  and wonder what good can come of my life.

Yup.  It really is that bad folks.  I'm sorry if you feel bad for me.  Don't.  I choose this career for the sole purpose of being able to travel.  Any other profession would give me a measly 2 weeks vacation a year.  There isn't anything in this world I would ever want to do for work 50 weeks of the year.  I don't even like work.  I do what I have to do until I can pack a few changes of clothes and a good book in a backpack and go off as far away as my budget will allow.

But back to that planning.  School can be made just bearable enough when I think about castles and train trips in Romania or jungles and river trips in Colombia- two places that are top on the list.  They were top last year too but the DR won out to make the kids happy.  And I had a way better time than I thought in the DR.  In fact, I would go back if there weren't so many other places I wanted to go!

Asia tops the list, Malaysia specifically.  But the plane tickets alone would eat the entire budget for the trip.  So we stick to South and Central America.  Not complaining!