Nice lookout tower...but it's closed.

Supposed to be breakfast included at this hostel, but as we watched the girl put it together yesterday morning we realized there wasn't much for us. Sure, coffee and tea, but we had already made our own hot chocolate anyhow. She brought out a big plate of chopped up papaya, and there were a couple of bananas and some bread and jam. That's it. Of course we couldn't eat the bread...so we left for our hike still a little hungry.

We stopped at a bakery. It's common in this area to get "pan de bono" which is a really soft cheese bread made with corn flour. It's really nice actually!

Our first goal was to walk over to the lookout tower. It's a fairly imposing structure and we had seen it from a distance when we arrived here.

As we got closer to the tower, we realized that there was nobody on it. Then again, I had read that it didn't open until 10:00am, but I knew that it had to be after that.

The lookout tower at Filandia.

We got to the ticket gate, and it was obviously closed. And had been for a long time. There was a military checkpoint on the road at that point and I thought about going to ask one of those guys, but they were busy.

Found out later that it's been closed since last January! Apparently it was built on sacred indigenous land and they have since had archaeological diggings there that have turned up some artifacts.

Oh well...guess we have to go find our own view.

I had done some map research, and there was a dirt track that led off into the countryside near the tower. 

Looking back at the town of Filandia.

Ruth, walking along the path. 

Once again, beautiful countryside.

Looking back up at the lookout tower.

This mandarin tree was loaded with fruit!

Not motorhome friendly!

Funny enough, this is in fact an actual road. As we were walking along, at least two motorcycles went by, and a couple of pickup trucks. No idea what they would have done if they met a vehicle coming the opposite way.

More great scenery.

We really haven't seen many exotic looking birds so far, even though there are apparently more than 1,800 species in Colombia. However, we did see a couple of green parrot looking things, but they were gone really quickly so there was no opportunity to get a photo. Then, we saw this hawk...

He sat fairly still for us for quite a long time.

The path we were on was going downhill pretty much all of the way and we knew we were going to have to hike back up. So we turned around and did just that. Back at town, we figured out that we had done about 5 kms (3 miles). Not bad, as a warm up to today's hike!

We stopped in the central plaza and it was really busy but we found a seat at a cafe and asked what cold drinks they could make. The girl said "Limonada de Coco".

Hm. Okay, we'll try it out.

And it was good! You wouldn't think that lemonade and coconut juice would go well together, but man...what a refreshing combination of flavors! Yummy!

The view from our seat at the cafe.

From there, we went to the church because I promised you a pic of the interior...but it was busy. There was a Sunday afternoon wedding going on. So we'll try again this afternoon.

We went back to the hostel and had a nap, then back to the nearby restaurant that we like. We both ordered the traditional paisa plate, but Ruth wasn't overly enthusiastic about hers. I ate the whole thing though!

That's a lot of food for 10,000 pesos ($4.75 CAD).

Today, we're getting on the bus to go back to Salento. This is the reason we came to this area to begin with....to do the hike to the rare Colombian wax palm trees. Hopefully we'll get some great photos for you of this special part of the world!

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