Colombia's coffee capital — wax palms in the Valle de Cocora, trout, and tejo
Salento is a small Andean town in the Quindío department at the heart of Colombia's UNESCO Coffee Cultural Landscape — the most instagrammed image of Colombia (rows of 60m wax palms in the mist-filled Valle de Cocora) is 12km away. The town is all colourful bahareque buildings, fresh trout, aguardiente, and afternoon games of tejo (a Colombian sport involving wet clay and gunpowder targets). The surrounding coffee farms — fincas — offer tours and fresh-brewed cups that ruin airport coffee forever.
Salento was founded in 1842 during the colonisation of the western Andes by Antioquian mestizos — part of the paisaje cultural cafetero (coffee cultural landscape) created when small-scale family farms replaced the large hacienda model that dominated elsewhere. The area's cultivation of arabica coffee on steep Andean slopes became the foundation of Colombian identity and export economy. UNESCO inscribed the Coffee Cultural Landscape in 2011 as a living cultural landscape that blends ecology, land use, and urban heritage.