ARRIVING AT PERIERA
My first impression of Periera was of a typical Colombian city, although it was already colder than the ones I had visited. I knew I was in the foothills of the Andes, however, and in the center of the so-called Coffee Axis. One of the advantages of hiring a driver is the opportunity to observe the city that will be your home for the short amount of time ahead of you. I had arranged for the driver I had met briefly last year in Bucaramanga (about a ten hour drive from Periera) to meet me at Matecaña International Airport and we had little trouble finding him. Periera, the capital of Risaralda, is the largest city I’ve visited in Colombia (apart from a drive through Bogota in 2012) but it maintains many of the subtle features of other Colombian cities and towns. Before reaching Hotel Reserve Monarca in Salento we made a stop at Victoria, one of three shopping malls in Periera. It is a three-level building with a movie theater, casinos, arcades and a food court offering the standard fa...