Manizales.
martes 28 de agosto – viernes 31 de agosto
I finally feel fully recovered on Monday and leave Bogota Tuesday
morning by bus. This is the only modern,
luxury bus I will see, at least in my first four months of travel (and I see a
lot of buses). It even has individually controlled monitors for each seat with
a selection of movies, music, etc. There was a cheaper bus leaving a couple of
hours later ($25 vs $35), but I do not want to wait and arrive too late in the day. Unfortunately the fancy
stuff does not do me much good as I have motion sickness most of the time. The trip to the pretty mountain city of
Manizales to the east is only 200 km but
it takes 8 hours. I sit with a young university student whose girlfriend is back
in Bogota. We have lunch together when the bus stops at a restaurant for lunch.
I try to order something light. The waitress lies and I end up with a huge fish
stew. In South America, fish are always served bones and all, so it takes a
while to get the bones out as there are a lot. I manage to eat most of the
large bowl of food and it is good. The road is steep and winding through
mountains, and I am nauseated the entire time except during the lunch
stop.
In Manizales, Michael and Silke, 2 pharmacy grad students from Germany
that I spend a couple of days with give me some motion sickness pills and give
me the names of the active ingredients to look for. I buy some more at a
pharmacy following their advice. From then on, whenever the road is too windy
and I start to feel it, I take some, and I feel just fine. I will try these next
summer when practicing rolling a kayak, as in the past, I always felt nauseated
when rolling.
I get a taxi from the Bus Depot (Terminal de Transporte) to the Mountain
Hostel, a backpacker’s kind of place. The price is reasonable (about $16)
except the last night (about $31) because the dorm room I am using has been
reserved for the weekend. I discover a small stash of used books in English
here and immediately grab one and spend the evening reading. It is a mystery
novel, not my favourite genre, but I devour it, not having read any books for a
month, other than my Guide to South America, and a book on Spanish grammar.
The mountainous city of Manizales
That afternoon I walk to the Biology Gardens on a nearby university
campus. In an area of maybe 25 Ha, there are some native cloud forest and some
planted areas, both appear to be used for experimental purposes. Included are
bamboo, palms, bananas, many lizards, insects, and many singing tree frogs. In
an open area, where I spot what I am pretty sure is a painted lady (one of
Canada’s migratory butterfly species), I am investigated by a large foraging
wasp, who finally flies off looking for better food prospects.
On a hilltop on the main street, there is a large and very busy café
with a lot of outside tables called the Juan Valdez café. This seems to be the
Colombian equivalent of Starbucks. I do not go in. I have never been in a
Starbucks either. OK, I have been in one twice.
The next day, I make a trip out to the Hacienda Venecia, a large coffee
farm with Germans, Michael and Silke, and two young women from Poland. We see
coffee fields in bottom land near a small river which clearly gets much bigger
during the wet season, and also coffee planted right up some very steep slopes.
This large farm has industrial scale machinery
for processing the coffee. As one might expect, this is an intensive
modern operation which uses fertilizers
and insecticides extensively. The otherwise knowledgeable guide feeds us
some idiocy about how chemical inputs are really much better for the
environment (the financial environment?).
Ripening coffee
berries
Many local workers are hired for harvesting by hand and there were large
buildings which were not shown where the workers are housed. There are two
harvests per year here while there is only one in Brazil due to climate. Here
the coffee is not shade grown like in Peru, perhaps because it is cooler here
but this does create very large monocultures of coffee unlike the small coffee
operations I will see later throughout southern Colombia and to a lesser extent
in Peru, where small local farmers have highly mixed small plantations which
include coffee plants.
To process the coffee berries they are passed through water channel s to
float off debris and damaged berries.
Then through rollers to peel the fruit. Then air dried in huge vats with
a paddle wheel and forced hot air. (Small farmers sun dry.)
Then the skin is removed from the two beans per berry except for the
beans that will be used for seeding. The latter are planted in little shaded
areas about 15 x 10 ft. Seeds are planted and watered and not long after
sprouting are transferred to individual plastic bags which are planted in
fields at 1 ft tall. Plants begin producing fruit at 2 years, are cut down at 5
to grow back. At 10, cut again and new young plants planted beside them to take
over.
We are treated to freshly roasted and ground brewed coffee (beans
roasted in a small kitchen size coffee roaster, then ground). Wow!! In spite of
my misgivings about their operation, the coffee is excellent. We have a lunch
of pork stew (part of the tour package) and then a swim in the pool next to
guest quarters before returning to town. Not sure why, but there is a small
troupe of peacocks (which are south Asian in origin) as well as domestic ducks
and turkeys roaming around.
I also learn that there are two groups of coffee species: Arabica (1-1.5% caffeine, milder, grown in
Colombia); and Robusta (3% caffeine, coarser, used in instant, espresso, and
some blends). All the coffee is hand picked in Colombia (like practically
everything else done by hand).
After the coffee farm tour and back in Manizales, I walk a few kms to
get to the office of the local Water Utility to get a permission form and to
reserve a guide to visit the 4000 ha Rio Blanco cloud forest ecological reserve
outside of town which was designated as
such to protect the local water supply. It was logged and then cattle were
introduced but for the last 30 years it has been reverting to cloud forest.
There are supposed to be 3 of us
but more showed up at the departure time so there are 7. At the
appointed time (8 AM), one of two taxis we needed showed up. The other
eventually. It is only a 10 minute drive out of town along the Rio Blanco to
the reserve although I was told we could
not walk there. It feels so nice to be back in a forest. Clearly I was not the only one who felt this
way. There is a couple from Spain/France. The guy is a former landscape
designer now repairing cameras and is enjoying the natural area as much as me.
The guide, Sandra, is quite knowledgeable, and helpful, and lives on the
Reserve. Although I lose a fair bit due to my Spanish, I learn about the bird
life there which is exuberant and noisy. (I had tried to reserve an earlier
start time to see more birds but was unsuccessful.) Lots of insects: the most
interesting are fluorescent small blue and green grasshoppers.
We mostly walk up a creek valley and when we get to the top of the
mountain, there is a small (2 ha) fenced enclosure for a spectacled bear, South
America’s only bear species, endangered in many areas. A lot like our black
bear with some tan markings on its face which gives it its name. When Sandra
calls to him, he comes out of hiding and to the fence. He is very handsome and
looks much like a black bear. This reserve is too small for bears but they are
breeding them for release elsewhere. At the moment, there is only a male, the
female having died recently. In Colombia, there is not much in the way of game
laws, so game is often very scarce except in strictly controlled reserves. The
same is true in Peru. Bolivia has another solution which I will talk about
later.
Beyond the enclosure is another Reserve building with a small insect
collection (in a climate controlled room) and a lot of hummingbird feeders
outside. The hummers flitting about the feeders appear to belong to about 10
hummingbird species, from very small to substantial and some very flamboyant
reds, blues and greens, and I take some pretty nice photos. Our walk back down
is anticlimactic but pleasant as we took the road. We are all pretty enthused
by the day’s hike.
One of the many species of hummers we watched
That aft, Silke and Michael go back to the coffee farm to spend the
night and I study my Spanish in a hammock out back of the hostel. I meet Larry,
a Canadian from the Lower Mainland of BC in his 60s, a retired welder, who has bought a 1997 single cylinder BMW 650
from an American expat ($2000) and plans
to tour South America. I had noticed the motorcycle in front of the other
hostel building down the street as I did not know that BMW made any single
cylinder bikes. Also because almost all local bikes are 250 cc or less. Larry
recounts to me a whole host of illnesses that he has suffered and is suffering
from. It is amazing he made the trip at
all. He is heading in the same direction as me so we may meet up again.
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