Kylee's Birthday

Rising early in the morning we walked down the streets of Jardin towards the bus stop. We were headed off to another small coffee town named Filandia. Due to the small dirt roads connecting the next closest town and Jardin, they only had one bus running per day. Given the physical distance of the first section of road, it should have taken less than an hour, but it took over three. This bus had no windows or doors… I am serious. The bus was a flat bed truck with wood built up to make it into seats and some walls with a roof. It was awesome. The road was quite a spectacle itself as well, as the bus would often just scrape along a sheer drop hundreds of feet down a mountain!

A dirt road big enough for one vehicle and a long cliff on the other side. We soon realized why there is only two buses a day and also why it takes so long to get from one place to the next in such a short distance. Shortly after surviving this bus ride we hopped on another bus for another two hours - this time a proper bus, on a proper road - and finally a short shuttle ride to get to Filandia. It was a long travel day, however, the entire journey had beautiful scenery so it passed easily.

A couple days in, after getting familiarized with the town, I celebrated my birthday. We ended up getting a reservation at the top restaurant in the area, Helena Adentro. It was incredible! We had coconut limeade (one of the main drinks to try in Colombia) to start, then ordered three shareable dishes. Unintentionally, the dishes we ordered were all pork, which is never a bad thing. Everything was delicious.

The first was a chorizo baguette with caramelized onions and chimmichurri. The second was a milk braised pork loin with white wine and mustard, served on a corn fritter topped with dill and the local queso. And the third was rum, panela, soy sauce and lime braised pork ribs, pulled off the bone, served with a green tomato relish and spicy red cabbage slaw. This dinner slowed down the rest of our day which we were more than okay with, and we decided put off our planned waterfall hike to the following morning.

Te hike was pretty flat, and easy going but it took almost two hours to get to these waterfalls. We approached a house where we paid a man to get access to his back yard that he had made steps down to see the waterfall. The hike was long and hot so Mark decided to go in, which was quite refreshing, and we were happy with the outcome of the hike. As we climbed back to the town, a Jeep Willy passed by us and we waved it down. Hitching a ride was a nice break and much better than walking!

We opted for a coffee to take in the last of the views the town offered us since we were headed to Salento the next morning, the third of the small towns in the coffee region.