Salento

After San Augustin, I headed for Salento, another small town not far from the city Armenia, well regarded as one of the main hubs of Colombia's "coffee country." A word about Colombian coffee: they like it mild, often, sometimes sweetened with Panela (a sweetener derived from sugarcane, but not exactly sugar) and sometimes with hunks of cheese dropped in and melted. Seriously.

Salento offers a national park with wax palms (massive palm trees that get up to 180 feet tall...also the national tree) and hummingbirds that will land on your finger (HARD to take pictures of), coffee fincas with owners who will let you tour the premises, a good town center to celebrate the Colombian independence day, and a new, violent drinking game I stumbled on in a warehouse.





Some light climbing...

I got to know the Salento jail. The night of the Colombian independence day, a soldier asked me to help the police with a guy they had brought in recently who was sitting in a cell "cooling off". Because he was Irish, they immediately thought that because I spoke English I could figure out what he was saying (think belligerent drunk irishman with a thick accent) and get him back to his hotel. He tried to swing at me from inside of his cell, so no luck for him. BUT, I did learn a thing or two about the police station. Until recently, the south of Colombia had been a hotbed of guerrilla activity. Not so many years ago, the town anticipated a guerrilla attack, changed the location of the "real" police station to across the street, and managed to sidestep the attack by using a decoy station for long enough to hold off the guerrillas and secure the town. When they reconstructed the police station, they installed an angled wire meshing on its face, meant to deflect molitov cocktails or other explosive projectiles, since police stations are usually the first hit during an attack.


Speaking of pyrotechnics...I was lucky enough to play the game Tejo in Salento. Think horseshoes, but:
- played in a warehouse instead of a backyard.
- played with round iron discs instead of horseshoes.
- played with "pits" filled with hard clay about 50% further apart than horseshoe pits.
- instead of aiming for a post, you aim for two small paper triangles in the middle of the pit.
- the small triangles are filled with gunpowder.

When the tejo disc hits the triangle, the entire town knows that someone scored a point. It's obnoxiously loud. Alcohol is right at home in this atmosphere and plays a prominent role in the gameplay.







Demonstration of the "target."