Jardin, Colombia

In the middle of our five week stay in Medellin, we decided to venture out of the city for a weekend trip to the magical town of Jardin. Jardin is only a three hour drive from Medellin, so we rented a car to make the journey. Although it was a pretty drive, it certainly was not relaxing. It was a pretty windy drive, and the driving in Colombia is definitely the most hectic of any country we’ve been to (update: we are now in Peru and it’s hard to say which is worse for driving).

Jardin is part of the “Zona Cafetera” (“Coffee Zone”) in Colombia and is a major coffee-producing region. Some pretty popular and well known coffee comes from here, including some Nespresso coffee. Jardin an incredibly beautiful and colorful old town surrounded by lush green mountains, and it’s also much less touristy than some of the other places in the coffee region. We stayed at a small four-room guesthouse run by a friendly and somewhat eccentric couple. The place was up a hill so it had great views of the area, a nice porch to relax on, and (of course) some cute doggos. It was about a 15 minute walk from the main downtown area, and you could also take a tuk tuk up the hill to get back. We arrived in Jardin on a Thursday evening and basically spent our first night walking to the downtown area and eating an incredibly delicious pizza dinner.

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On our first full day in Jardin we spent the morning exploring the downtown area, including the main plaza and its iconic church — an incredibly ornate building from 1872 that was made with hard carved stones from the surrounding hills. We stopped for coffee at a one of the nice cafes on the square and had one of many cups of the coffee of the day (when in the coffee zone!).

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Our guesthouse then arranged a tour of a local coffee farm in the afternoon. The farm was very small and had one main farmer as well as a nice family living in the home attached to the farm. The family made us lunch and we then went for a tour of the farm and learned about the coffee making process. On the tour it was just the two of us, the farmer, and a translator who was a neighbor and another coffee farmer. Although we really didn’t need the translator, we actually really enjoyed spending time with him. He was 20 years old and extremely nice, and I think all of us enjoyed talking to each other, learning about each other’s backgrounds, and practicing English/Spanish.

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After the tour we took a tuk tuk back to town and headed to a local bird reserve that’s a five minute walk from the main downtown. The reserve is home to a bird called the cock of the rock, which only comes to the reserve in the early morning or early evening. We had never seen any bird like this, and it was really cool to be so close to so many beautiful birds. In the evening we had dinner in town and a drink on the main plaza, which serves as a top notch people watching spot.

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The next day we embarked on an all day hike to the “Cueva del Esplendor” or “Cave of Splendor” (sounds like something straight out of Indiana Jones). The couple running our guesthouse initially tried to arrange a jeep ride for us and said it was necessary to take a jeep most of the way, which was not what we had read. Once they realized that we actually find walking three hours uphill to be pleasant, they were surprised but cancelled the jeep. We took a pretty remote and muddy route to the cave, which would have been completely impossible without a helpful offline maps app. In the beginning of the hike we passed by a few houses but pretty soon found ourselves in the middle of nowhere and did not see a soul (only lots of cows).

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At the end of the hike we were surprised to come to a house and small restaurant with 10-15 people sitting around it. As it turns out, there is a paved route/road that you can either drive or walk along, and that’s how most people go. At the house we had some lunch and then had to go with a guided group on another 15 minute walk through some steep jungle terrain in order to arrive at the cave. The cave was pretty neat, and some people went swimming, but the water was quite cold and we didn’t bring our bathing suits.

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Although the cave was very cool, the hike itself was actually more of the highlight, especially given that we were hiking all on our own (vs. having to go with a group of people and a guide down to the actual cave). We decided to take the alternative (and less muddy) route home in order to get a change of scenery. We had the joy of being accompanied by a cute stray doggo that we named Pepper for the majority of the journey, and we loved watching him chase cows in the fields as we walked along. After a pretty long day of hiking, we were fairly pooped and opted to go back to the pizza place to refuel.

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On our last day in Jardin we went on a short hike to a lookout point called Cristo Rey, named for its large religious statue (hills with large religious statues are quite popular in South America). Apparently there is usually a cable car that goes here, but it was under construction when we were there. Davy hiked a little further to a nice waterfall while Shari opted to sit at the cafe at the lookout point, read, and enjoy some jugo de maracuya, AKA passionfruit juice (maracuya is everywhere in Colombia and makes for an amazing fresh juice. We’re pretty addicted). After enjoying the view for a bit, we hiked back down, got lunch at another coffee shop downtown, and headed back to Medellin. We were super happy that we took this weekend trip and fell even more in love with Jardin than we expected!

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