In the morning we took a taxi out to the Cali Zoo, braving the screaming children on a Sunday :). We had read it was one of the best in South America but still didn't know quite what to expect of the enclosures. The zoo was great though, loads of animals and enclosures comparable to those in London Zoo. There were lots of tropical birds including the tucans in the picture, cheeky parrots and flamingoes. They had some other native animals with crazy noses includin...

We started to get cold pretty quickly after stopping due to the high altitude. We next headed for La Montana lookout point, taking us 3/4 of an hour for the steep climb. At this point we were 2850m above sea level with a lookout to the mountain and lots of friendly dogs at the top to share the moment with. We made our way back down chatting to an American guy from Boston getting travel tips for Peru and Bolivia. Along the way we had an amazing view out across the...

Fuelled with homemade granola and fruit (from the American Diner again) we set out for Valle de Cocora. We hopped on colourful jeeps from Salento main square for the half hour journey, on each jeep a few of the locals are on the back step holding on the back of the roof! We headed up the rocky track and eventually caught up with two local teenagers with fishing rods, one of which had grown up in Miami. We walked together half of the trip, they showed us an extra ...

Our Spanish guide from the coffee tour had recommended a 3 hour hike to some pretty waterfalls so we decided to give it a go in the afternoon. We had bought some packed lunches from the American diner that morning so with those in our bags we headed off down the trail. After a few metres we realised that one of the 'lassie' dogs from the hostel (the youngest female pup) was following us. The coffee farm that is linked with the hostel was a 20 minute walk down the...

The hostel we were staying at is linked with a local coffee farm so in the morning we had a 3 hour tour learning all about coffee, how it's grown, the different types, how they make it etc. The best coffee is grown in certain climates, at a certain height above sea level and with a certain amount of shade - at this farm they used bamboo, banana and plantain trees to create the shade. Afterwards we walked around the farm and our Spanish guide had some fermented an...