Salento is coffee heaven. It’s a lovely, quiet town surrounded by plantations so you have a big choice of farms to visit. I had read some reviews so based on those and the posters around the town it seemed that Don Elias was the town’s coffee godfather, and a bit of a character so we headed over there to join the tour…
This was early on our trip when our Spanish wasn’t that great, so when we arrived at the farm (which despite the signs looks just like a random house that you’ve intruded on!) there was only the grandmother sitting on the porch. She spoke a lot and gestured at us to sit down, so we waited awkwardly until the grandson came out. He was also chatting away very quickly in Spanish and we had decided by this point that this wouldn’t be any good; that we should leave for another farm. We told him that we were off as we thought the tour would be in English…. He waited until we were half way down the drive before saying “ONLY JOKING GUYS! OF COURSE I SPEAK ENGLISH!”
What followed was a fantastic half an hour led by Don Elias’ grandson, Carlos. The coffee production takes place right at their house, it has a great family feel to it; so much so that when he showed a couple of us to the bathroom it was literally right next door to an open room where someone was still asleep in bed! This added to the inclusive, very Colombian experience! Carlos had a great sense of humour, brilliant English and a very well-practised speel of information about the farm.
Although I love drinking the coffee I’m not a complete coffee buff so this was just enough information for me. I found the focus on all-organic produce fascinating, especially learning which plants they bring in to balance alkaline in the soil to have the coffee grow better, which plants they use as a pesticide spray etc. Those who are big, big coffee nerds may want to ask for an extended tour.
Don Elias is a very small farm, which focuses on quality over quantity and with a great work ethic. They are one of the only farms here which still grind their beans manually to maintain flavour; under instruction from their ‘famous’ grandfather and despite protests from the younger family members! We didn’t get to meet him, but his grandson was, I’m sure, just as charming.
We ended the tour trying a delicious cup of coffee. If you want to buy some make sure you do so there because you won’t find this in the town… almost all of Salento’s coffee is shipped straight out of Colombia, to Europe and Jamaica primarily.
A tour with this very welcoming family is a great way to spend an hour in Salento… and if you’re lucky you may even get to meet ‘the Don’!
GET THERE | To reach most of the coffee farms, you head to the bridge over the river and follow the signs to the farm. It took us about 45 minutes from town.
TOUR | 10,000 COP each. Tours seem to be adhoc, so just turn up and wait for the next one to start!
