SALENTO

 

If the bugs that make your room a constant home at the Hotel Reserva Monarca are a warning that you are now on nature’s turf then the sunrise is nature’s way of compensating you. Let it be said that the sight of the mist-covered mountains in their multi-hued glory is more than enough of an apology for a few crawlers under your bed. There are no better morning greetings than the sounds of birds and other animals meeting the rising sun with you.

Of course, Hotel Reserva Monarca is surrounded by natural majesty and breakfast is served in a veranda overlooking the forest. Here your companies are not so much the bugs that crawl into your room through the gaps in the screen door but butterflies that seem to know the hotel was named in their honor and lizards. Breakfast here consists of chorizo, scrambled eggs or a calentado (a “warmed up”, consisting of rice and beans) and assorted fruits accompanied by coffee or hot chocolate. I tried to alternate each day. The first time I tried Latin American hot chocolate was in 2002 in Costa Rica and found it was nothing like the hot chocolate I was used to. It was thicker, darker and less sweet. In other words, the cacao was purer. While I was jarred at first I have since grown fonder of this simplification of the cold morning staple.

View from the room
View from the veranda


After breakfast we took a walk around the gardens surrounding the premises. What I had taken to be a pond from the photos I had seen before leaving was actually a constructed moat upon which stood the hotel’s tiki bar.

If bugs were my uninvited guests in the room, the lizards a welcome presence on the veranda a white cat was my unexpected companion in the garden. It was a rambunctious energetic feline, small in size but great in speed. It was evident by its behavior that its hunting instinct had not been as suppressed as in some of its other domestic relatives. If ever a cat showed tendencies of both domestication and feral nature this little fellow was it. It soon turned the table and found a sport in chasing me around a circular flower bed at one point making an unsuccessful leap at me with outstretched paws. Amused as I was by its pitiful attempts to pounce on me, I could not help but feel that this little hunter was a menace to the smaller local wildlife.

Before I could reflect further, however, our driver arrived for the day’s trip to Salento. Like many Colombian towns, Salento wears its history proudly and celebrates the nation’s liberator with a Plaza Bolivar. Throughout my stay in Colombia I saw more monuments to Simon Bolivar than I often do to George Washington in the States but reverence for Bolivar is not the only parallel between Salento and other Colombian municipalities. A church, in Salento’s case Nuestra Señora del Carmen, acts as the hub of the town square. But Salento is unique in at least one glaring way. At the end of Calle Real, a vibrant narrow road thriving with shops, are 250 steps carved upon a hill leading up to Alto de la Cruz, a lookout point from which many of the landmarks of the area (both natural and architectural) can be seen. Crowds are frequent here from the stairs all the way to the top, where vendors and tour guides are always present.

                                                                    


                                                                           

Salento is rowed in colorful buildings, typical of the colonial era. Some have become residences and offices, but most are shops and eateries where visitors can often see local singers wandering in to serenade the public while they dine. Visitors would be well advised to try the local ice cream shop, which sells a lot more than ice cream. Colombia has two dominant ice cream brands, Crem Helado and Colombina. Crem Helado was more visible so I tried two of their offerings on this trip. One was the last leftover of a Christmas edition (Sueño De Navidad), an ice cream bar shaped like a Christmas tree covered in fudge and filled with Christmas cookie flavored ice cream and a cherry center. My favorite was a Crem Helado standard, vanilla chip. Don’t let the name fool you, the chips are multi-colored candies dotting the vanilla scoop. However, for the end of a day in the tropics nothing beats a cup of salpicon, best described as a soaked fruit salad in a cup with slices small enough to drink, its colors as lively as the country that hosts it.


The historic buildings of Salento

Salpicon






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