Don Elias Plantation

As I was in the coffee region of Colombia, I made a visit to a nearby plantation to see how the coffee there was grown. It was a completely organic farm run by a nice old man who showed us around and told us about all the steps of making coffee.

Here's Don Elias himself picking a few coffee seeds off the plants.
 
The seeds can be green or red, apparently they both taste the same. They were just growing all over the place.
 
 
What the actual coffee beans look like when they come out of the seed.
 
He had all kinds of other stuff growing on the farm, too. Here is an AMAZING orange that we got to taste...
 
...bananas freshly cut off the tree.
 
This room he used to dry out the seeds.
 
Roasting the beans.

Now we have some normal looking coffee!

Grinding the beans.
 
Ta da! Freshly made coffee for us to drink.

9 Course Breakfast

I was recommended a hostel by a friend in Salento called Republika de Artistas. It was run by an eccentric man from Barcelona who claimed not to be a chef but cooked a nine course breakfast every morning. As I'm writing this I'm realizing that I must have forgotten a picture of the eggs, so it was actually 10 courses!! Definitely the biggest breakfast I have ever had, and it took over 2 hours for it all to be served. This was all included in the $11 room rate!!

Hot cereal

Yogurt

Cinnamon and rosemary flavored fruit salad

Trout sashimi

Mango sashimi
 
Salad
 
Trout entree
 
Soup
 
Bread and apple desert
 

Music Festival

A big group from my hostel went out to a small town outside of Cali, Ginebra, for a big music festival. It was a lot of good music, food, markets, and fun!
 
One of the local Colombian beers is called "Poker" and it must have been sponsoring this festival because it was EVERYWHERE. I liked it because they were serving cheap Texas sized draft beers! I even got a hat. I found it really amusing that their slogan was "the beer of truth," as I translated it, but later found out that it really translates to "the real beer." How disappointing.
 
Street food!
 
 

Sanctuario de Las Lajas

My first stop in Colombia was an amazing church built over a river. I had a seen a picture of it somewhere and just had to see it in person. It was amazing!
 
 
 
 

Welcome to Colombia

 

Mitad del Mundo

The equator line runs right through Quito, so naturally this is a huge tourist attraction.

Here is the "first" equator line, discovered and mapped by the French back in the 1700's or something like that. This is the more historical area.
 
 
Along with GPS technology came another, more exact equator line about 200 meters away. Of course, this is yet another tourist attraction.
 
This is a sun clock, but as it is sitting exactly on the equator, it is the only one of it's kind that can be vertical rather than horizontal. This may be interesting to any math freaks but probably no one else...
 

Hats at the Otavalo Market

 
 
 

Cotopaxi Glacier

Although I didn't hike up to the summit of Cotopaxi, I did take a mini version just up to the tip of the glacier.
 
 
 
 

Waterfall Hike