Welcome back to Curious Perro. After a delay of a few months, I am back on my series “Planning a Trip to Colombia During Uncertain Times”. I am reinvigorated as I have rescheduled my trip to Colombia for the beginning of September.
In a previous article, I created a travel plan for exploring Bucaramanga and much of the Department of Santander.
With this article, we are starting our research on traveling to the coffee growing region called “Eje Cafetero” and referred to in English as the “Coffee Triangle” or “Coffee Axis” of Colombia. We will begin by looking at the city of Pereira and our first night’s hotel destination in the community of Santa Rosa de Cabal.
On the first leg of our trip to Eje Cafetero, we are going from Medellin to Pereira. Rather than driving 5.5 hours, we are going to fly via Easy Fly Airlines. As I have mentioned in previous videos, Easy Fly is a commuter airline within Colombia. The cost of a round trip for 2 from Medellin to Pereira is 785,500 Colombian pesos (about $206 usd) and will only take 45 minutes.
Located in the center of the Golden Triangle which goes from the cities of Bogotá to Medellín to Cali, Pereira has become an integral part of Colombian trade and commerce. Pereira is the capital city of the department of Risaralda, the most populated city in Eje Cafetero and often considered the capital of the entire region.
Here is a picture of Pereira with the César Gaviria Trujillo Viaduct in the foreground.
In the 1920s, settlers started growing large quantities of high-quality coffee in the mineral-rich, volcanic soil of the mountainous foothills of the Andes. Others produced sugarcane and raised cattle. In the 1950s, Pereira quadrupled its population and creating a national melting pot.
Located about 14 km to the east of Pereira is our first destination. It is the Ukumari Biopark opened to the public in 2015. It is considered a “Flora and Fauna Theme Park”. It is the most ambitious tourist project in the coffee region and the largest theme park in Latin America with an area of 820,000 m2.
The biopark is an educational and conservation development where animals, from all around the world and Colombia, are in their natural environments. The idea is to break stereotypes of Victorian zoos with prisonlike animal enclosures.
The second destination on my list is the Pereira Art Museum. Unlike most strictly “art” museums, this art museum includes more than physical art like painting and sculpture. Dance, music, performing arts and even gastronomy (the art of food) are on the menu. Some of the pictures and events showcased on their website and Facebook page are intriguing to me.
The highlight of my trip to Pereira is in fact about a one’s hour drive from Pereira. Through the community of Santa Rosa de Cabal there are breathtaking thermal pools or hot springs, known in Spanish as a “termales”. Termales Santa Rosa de Cabal is a spa located at the side of springs with reasonably priced accommodations for a gringo like me. If you are able to make reservations during the off-season in the middle of the week, a room with a king bed runs only $70 usd per night and add breakfast for 2 for only $78 usd per night. September is the off-season and you can book your room through Booking.com.
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