A family adventure around South America

  Santa Rosa de Cabal The traditional tourist trail would have us heading straight to Medellin next, but as we have the benefit of time we chose to have a few more days in the coffee region and head to the town of Santa Rosa de Cabal. We took the bus to Pereira from Solento, which was remarkably simple with the help of the local staff, and then a taxi over to our finca accommodation in the countryside around the town. We’d found a place with a pool for the kids that was famous for a spectacular view point, and that most certainly did not disappoint. Finca Villa del Campo was offered basic rooms, but great value with the pool, the use of the outside kitchen and a traditional Columbian breakfast (I’ve never eaten so many eggs as I have in the past few weeks). The owners were very friendly and helpful and it's well placed for a short walk up the hill to the Finca Del Cafe which offers tours of the coffee farm, a more upmarket restaurant and a bamboo lookout point. The main reason for ...

From Bogota we headed to the coffee growing region in central Colombia, ‘eje cafetero’. This was our first experience of South American long haul buses, something that we expect to become a staple in the coming months. We opted for a bus in the day to Armenia as it was only (!) 8 hours and we didn’t want to both wait around Bogota with all of our bags until late at night and then be dropped off very early in the morning. Travelling by day also meant that we could fully take in the views on the journey, and they were spectacular, firstly as we descended from the Andean plains that house Bogota, and then as we traversed mountain passes between Ibague and Armenia. Some of these weren’t kind on the stomachs of Becky and the kids, but they all made it through and we pulled into the pus station as dark was falling. If we had been travelling without kids we probably would have tried to push on another bus for an hour up to Solento, but we thought it made sense to stop in a cheap hotel for the...

We flew into Bogota from Madrid after a night in an airport hotel (with a pool to ensure that the kids had been entertained and exercised). It was a night flight of around 10 hours, meaning that we would arrive between 3-4am Colombian time. The kids slept very well on the plane, though they slept leaning on Becky which impacted her ability to eat or sleep properly… Two notable things from the flight - firstly the Latin American tradition of clapping a plane’s landing, I remember this from visiting Brazil when I was 11, but it was a surprise to the kids which was nice. Secondly, the speed of the descent, we were prepared enough to know that Bogota sits at a high altitude (around 8,800 metres), but we hadn’t considered what this would mean for the speed at which we would land from the start of our descent. Knowing how tired we would be, Becky had booked the previous night in our AirBnB apartment so that we could check straight in and not be left in the city in the small hours. Jet lag an...