It was a triumphant sign for our marriage when we came to each other independently with the confession that, in fact, neither of is gave much of a damn about spending any more time at the beach. With adventure in our hearts we abandoned the Caribbean coast in favor of the allure of the wild green hills of coffee in the famed Zona Cafetera, starting with a short flight to Medellin (meh-deh-JHEEN).

Medellin was a bit of a heartbreaker for us. With our flight booking for Patagonia presiding over much of what we do now, we have some, but not much, flexibly over the choices we make. Visiting the Zona Cafetera effectively would mean staying for one overnight in Medellin and hurriedly rising the next morning for a bus. What we couldn’t have known is that the city is incredible.

The bus from the airport winds down the mountains that surround the city on all sides. Occasionally, as the bus makes a turn, or a break in the foliage presents itself, a gasping gorgeous view opens up for you, and you see this huge city before you, end to end… Clusters of tall narrow red brick buildings erupt from the ground at interval marking various barrios. The uniformity brings to mind the kinds of housing projects you see in major cities in the northeast US, but I wouldn’t make an unqualified guess about them here. The city crawls up the steep banks of its mountains like a jagged rug – it’s homes impossibly dense, almost on top of each other. And when the sun falls behind its crown of mountains, the hills sparkle like rivers of golden stars…

Of course we don’t have any good pictures. The views were fleeting and the shots were blurry. We may well be back, however, should we leave the way we came, enticed by story after story of travelers that came for a week and stayed for 3 months.

We were separated on the bus, which often happens. I (Cardin) gathered the courage to talk to my row mate, to ask him if he knew the stop for “the San Diego shopping center” and could let me know when we arrive. 30 minutes later, Luis and I had covered the basics: where we are from, what we do, where we’ve been, where we are going.. We made some language transfer around verb tenses, and the translation of words like “Honeymoon”, which comfortingly, is “la luna de miel”. Arriving at San Diego shopping center, Luis agreed to share a taxi with us, which was very, very fortuitous, as the driver could not find it, and it took 20 minutes of circling the neighborhood with both he and Luis leaning out the window every block asking directions.

In the end, Luis refused payment and wished us well – and thus is how we earned our own story of the very famed Colombian warmth and hospitality.

There’s not much to say about the hostel – it was in a pretty rad mid-century home. The thing to make note of was the location, however: it seemed that the more popular hostel ghetto was strangely placed in a very posh neighborhood. Extremely clean, clearly affluent, with what seemed to be akin to a Whole Foods a few blocks away.

The bus to Salento was strange and beautiful. The first class bus with Flota Occidental had a scant 34 seats, as each was excessively reclinable. The aisle was extremely narrow, making each seat amply wide and comfortable. Each seat featured it’s own touchscreen video display, and as the bus disembarked, the attendant visited each row in turn, reaching in to a black plastic bag and producing an SD card, which he slid into the slots of each individual screen – giving us access to a variety of MP4 movies. In the end it wasn’t necessary as they lowered two aisle mounted screens and played The Expendables 2 (Los Indestructables), and How To Train Your Dragon 2. Both played at ear splitting volumes over the cabin PA, neither of which we could watch because the winding and bumping of the ride, which had us sliding back and forth across the luxurious expanses of our seats, left us very green in the first few hours.

5 hours of incredible views – of rolling hills and narrow towns perched on the ridges of mountains, of rivers and valleys, mountains shrouded in cloud, roadside tiendas and restaurants run out of peoples homes… And then one short ride on a collectivo (where I had to sit on the hump next to the driver) and we arrived in the small town of Salento.