PARQUE DEL CAFÉ AND A BRUSH WITH DANGER

 Quindio’s Parque del Café gives visitors what they want from a visit to a coffee plantation but, unfortunately, it doesn’t stop at that and turned what could work on its own as an educational experience amongst the rows of foliage into what can not unreasonably be called an amusement park with a farm in the background.

A good starting point and one keeping with the nature of what a visit to the coffee plantation should be is the Coffee Museum. This quick but well organized and informative self-guided museum strikes the balance between the educational and engaging with many interactive exhibits such as one in which visitors act as coffee farmers filtering bad beans from the basket. Even better is the ensuing walk down Coffee Process Path where guides stationed throughout the walk explain (often with hands-on opportunities) the trajectory of the coffee bean into a morning stimulation. 

Typical Colombian coffee truck seen in the park

There are other peripheral sights throughout the park, including botany displays, the Harvest Monumnet, murals charting the history of coffee farming in Colombia and (though I missed them) dances in celebration of one of Colombia’s largest international exports. 

A fellow visitor at the park

There was but one carnivalesque attraction that does contribute to the purest experience of the park, the so-called ropeways, two cableways that take visitors over the park offering a bird’s eye view of the plantation, the surrounding bamboo forest, and the main plaza, offering a birds-eye-view to the size of the place.

From here Parque del Café is little more than a Six Flags, with generic bumper boats and cars, a rollercoaster and a river rapids ride. Why the managers of the park felt the need to add bring this garish chatter to something as peaceful as a farm walkthrough is a question with answers obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of business and it perhaps could have been overlooked had it been relegated to its own area. But the effect seeps into the more meditative areas marring the experience of Parque del Café as a whole. 

That night for a change of pace our driver took us to a Chinese restaurant he recommended in Salento. It was a modern upscale place definitely catered to tourists. The place was packed with jet-setter Americans and was reminiscent of an Asian fusion bar in the Seaport District. About ten minutes into our arrival the power went out in the restaurant. The staff brought candles to the tables along with the menus. The guests didn’t seem to care and the staff carried on as usual. I too was not concerned, however, I did feel slightly uncomfortable when I had to reach the bathroom which was located in a booth outside of the restaurant beyond a dark little garden passage. I tried not to let my thoughts of who or what could be hiding bother me, however, and once back in the restaurant I decided I was in no rush to leave. Like everyone else I had gotten accustomed to the darkness. 

Suddenly, my driver entered and told me that as soon as I was done to meet him outside. He did not seem particularly alarmed but I could tell he was anxious to leave so I asked for the check and left. The driver met us outside and told us to follow him to where he had parked the car, walking at a brisk pace. Once in the safety of the car he told me that it was never a good sign when the lights went out in these towns or smaller cities and the in the last few days it had been happening in the area with some frequency. It could, he said, be due to nothing more than fault power lines but this was also a common tactic of local guerillas to cut off a town’s power supply and then taken over. His suspicions rose while he was waiting for us in a local hot dog tavern. The moment the lights went out the owner of that establishment became nervous, apologized to him and told him he had to close shop immediately. My driver then returned to his car and while waiting for me to call him there he was approached by a man and a woman who began asking him, as he describe it, odd questions that made him uneasy. Soon after that couple walked away he came right in the restaurant and called me. Sure enough, as we were driving back to Hotel Reserva Monarca soldiers began showing up in street corners, may passing us by in their motorcycles. 

“They are on alert,” my driver told me. And the last look I got at the soldiers confirmed to me that they were standing in wait for something. The ride back to the hotel through the pitch-black countryside was the most foreboding and seemingly the longest ride I ever took. The hotel was a welcome sight and the following night its floating tiki bar overcompensated for a lively dinner cut short, ending the journey on a high note.




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