Early start this morning, we had a 9:30am pickup by Gustavo, the driver organised for us by the girls from the travel agency.
Gustavo drove us to the Colombian National Coffee Park, only about 15 minutes away from our hosteria.
The Parque Nacional del Café is a theme park, a combination of museums, historical and cultural exhibitions about coffee production in Colombia – plus an amusement park with rides and shows.
We spent the day looking at the exhibitions, enjoying the walk through the coffee plantation (along a winding path down a steep hill where the coffee was growing!), and wandering around the amusement park.
It was a very tiring day – especially with the heat and humidity. We paid for unlimited rides for Andres (it was a standard kids ticket), but couldn’t convince him to go on much – I think he was a bit nervous about things. We did have a breakthrough when we discovered a carousel that had pictures of Goofy on it, Andres thought he might like to go on that one, since it had Mickey Mouse’s friend on it. We also went on a smallish Ferris Wheel together and we enjoyed the train ride through the park.
Later in the day, Andres got a bit tired and grumpy and wouldn’t even let us go on some adult rides by ourselves – so we didn’t really get our money’s worth from the tickets we had purchased. The joys of travelling with a 3yo I guess!
Gustavo picked us up at 4pm and drove us a bit further down the road to the town of Montenegro – complete with old buildings, narrow streets and people everywhere. We had been told that Sunday was the day that all the farmers went into town – interesting contrast to Cali, where Sunday is the day that all the Caleños head out into the countryside to find restaurants and amusement parks! We stopped at a small supermarket for some supplies and visited an ATM to get cash to pay for our tours for the coming days before heading back to the hosteria in time for dinner.
We all went to bed early again – another tiring day!
Nicol is smiling at her papa,obviously knows who he is!