Corcora Valley, Colombia- By Anna

Cocora Valley Hike: a very hard experience. On our first day in Salento, we had a nice breakfast with a German couple who had done the Cocora valley hike. They showed us pictures and it was funny to hear what they had to say about it, the lady said they meant to go on a two hour hike but then half way through the hike her husband led them on the wrong trail and ended up going on a five hour long hike. She was not happy about that. So of course we now had to do this long long hike. We called our friend Freddie the taxi driver to pick us up and drove off. When we got there, it looked like it was about to rain. We were hoping it wouldn’t and then we began the hike. At the beginning we saw wax palms, they are like palm trees but were so much taller and they produce wax. We were all happy until it started to rain and go up hill like the Grouse grind. Boy we were muddy and wet. We also came across some very funky bridges like one that looked like a tree had fallen over a river, some very slippery ones and another bridge the Elise thought would be fun to turn into a catwalk and didn’t know that a stranger was filming her. After that, we all had a laugh. When we got to the end of the trail we chose to go check out the humming bird garden. When we got there, there was so many humming birds and the bonus was that you could get very close to them and they wouldn’t move. We were starving so we got a snack and tried cheese dipped in hot chocolate and it was absolutely disgusting. Amelie and Elise also played with their hot chocolate. After snack, we kept on going until we reached the top. We actually sang ourselves to the top. When we got to the top, these people tricked us, saying “ sorry you can’t come up this way”. We thought that they were telling the truth but thank goodness they were not. At the top we took pictures and in this one we are mostly all smiling but those were definitely fake. We were exhausted. Then it was time to go down. Wow, that was fun and exhausting!