Clouds and Hummingbirds

Ah, all this green!! It’s a sight for sore eyes. They don’t call the Andies the Green Mountains for nothing. Green, lush, rainforest - whoops, I just dropped a hint: Rain. No rain, no lush forests, no streams, no waterfalls, no green. And so nature makes sure that enough rain falls on these blessed hills for them to stay super green.

All this region is prone to rain. Here some Botero statues in Medellin are getting a proper washing.

Usually the rain starts up some time in the late afternoon or evening. Mornings tend to be the brightest time of the day.

But it’s not just rain, it’s clouds. Up here on top of the world, I am often in the clouds.

This makes viewpoints a bit defunct - here is a viewing platform in Manizales, which I didn’t bother to climb...

Manizales was a pleasant one day stop over on the way to the little village of Salento. Manizales was possibly the least touristy small town I’ve been to on this trip. Not that Colombia is overrun by Western tourists (Cartagena a possible exception).

But now I’m in Salento in the heart of the coffee country - Zona Cafetera. 

My travel time and this trip are running out! A few days in Salento then it’s back to Bogota to catch my plane back to cold-and-snow-and-dark. At least I’m not in the Caribbean heat any more - the weather here could count as a kind of acclimatisation process.

One of the major reasons for people to wash up in this nice little village is the Cocora valley with its famed wax palms (Colombia’s national tree).

There is a very pleasant five hour treck from Cocora valley that goes along a river

Crossing it occasionally using some unlikely looking bridges

To the top of a mountain and then back down again. On the way down, the low-lying clouds gathered and started to obscure the view of wax palms.

Wax palms are ridiculously high: 50-60 meters even. So they tower over the other plants in the rain forest eerily in the cloudy air.

And they’re wonderful, strange and a great deal of very unusual birds feed on them, making this a birdwatcher’s paradise. Pearls before swine in my case. I can only recognize the main categories: Little birds, big birds and pretty birds.

Talking of the first and the latter: Hummingbirds!!

On the treck, there was the possibility to visit Kolibri farm, which true to its name housed a large and pampered flock (???) of hummingbirds. (A drone of hummingbirds? A hum of hummingbirds?)

Beautiful darlings! Pampered, because they had feeding dishes, where they could get their sweet water without bothering to buzz in and out of flowers. So a relatively easy target for the aspiring amateur photographer.

But there little beauties made my day. Hope they make yours too!