Salento: Around Town

Salento is a cute, little town in the mountainous region of Colombia. You can see its exact location on the map below. Salento has become a large tourist town because of its location next to the Cocora Valley (Valle del Cocora), a valley famous for its wax palm trees (palmas de cera), the national tree of Colombia, that attracts visitors throughout the year.

This Web page explains well the different ways to get to Salento: https://coupletraveltheworld.c...

We chose to travel by bus. We were coming from Medellín. It was a scenic, six-hour ride. We used the Flota Occidental bus company. Here is their website: https://flotaoccidental.co/

Here is a picture from the trip:

Plaza de Bolívar is the central plaza, or town square, of Salento, yet another landmark in this region of the world named in honor of the Latin American hero Simón Bolívar. The square itself is a great place to walk, sit, and talk. Outlining the square are a bunch of restaurant tents that actually serve really good food. (I often find that the restaurants in a town square can be overrated--They just survive because of their location.) Around the outline of restaurant tents is a road. Then bordering the road on all four sides are buildings that house various operations: Stores, artisan vendors, hotels, a church, etc.

When in Salento, you should eat trout (trucha). The town is known for it. Many restaurants, especially those in the main plaza, serve freshwater trout that is farmed in the Quindío River that runs around the town and through the Cocora Valley. Restaurants will offer a variety of options of sauces in which you can order the trout to be prepared and will normally serve the trout on top of or alongside a large patacón, which is a plantain fritter.

The picture below doesn't show the trout very well, but it's how the fish was served to us. The trout sat, nearly completely covered, in a large plate of green sauce.

Patacón isn't only served to accompany the trout, but is a menu option at restaurants in the plaza and all around town that can be prepared with a variety of toppings: Meat, cheese, vegetables, mushrooms, sauce, etc. The U.S. equivalent of this type of plate would probably be nachos. You can see our patacón in the picture below. If I remember correctly, this one was served with ground beef.

Patacón is a singular word in this case because as you can see in the picture below it literally is one massive piece of plantain fritter. However, the fried plantain is also often prepared in the form of circular "chips," in which case they would be called patacones. Plantain chips are popular throughout all of Latin America. In many countries, they are called tostones.

Poker is the name of a lager style beer brewed by Cervecería Bavaria in Bogotá, Colombia.

Elote, or grilled street corn, is a classic Latin American treat.

By now, you've surely seen the jeeps in some of the pictures, right? These four-by-fours are called Willys! These are the taxis that run all day transporting tourists from the plaza to the Cocora Valley, where people go to hike. They are iconic of Salento.

This street is the most popular of Salento, popular for its shops and restaurants.

Do you see in the distant background of the picture above how the street seems to continue up to the top of the hill? There are steps that will take you to a mirador, or overlook, where you can get a great aerial view of Salento. We didn't go up there, so I don't have any pictures... Shame on me...

One of the best things to do in Colombia is play tejo, a "tossing game" similar to cornhole in the United States that is the national sport of Colombia. There is an indoor tejo venue in Salento called Cancha de Tejo Los Amigos that is open to anyone. The workers are very friendly and will teach you how to play. I wrote about it here: https://www.willdodds.com/arti... 

Good night from the bus station...