Minca

The wedding group had all agreed to meet in Palomino to celebrate Anna's 40th birthday, but we had a few days before that, so some of us decided to head to Minca, a tiny town along a river in the jungle. On arrival we discovered that only motorbikes are able to get up to the hostel we'd booked, so we jumped on the back of mototaxis and rode up the bumpy tracks. The town was so small that in my first explorative walk out I ran in to 7 different wedding guests I hadn't realised were there!

Back at the hostel I got chatting to Jess from New Zealand and we decided to hike up to a cacau plantation the next day. It was scorching hot, and we arrived at the plantation drenched in sweat, and were immediately invited to join the cacau tour that was in progress. As we slowly cooled off in the shade, we tried cocoa beans at every stage they go through from being fruit to becoming chocolate - the fruit, the bean, the roasted bean, the nibs, cocoa paste, the paste with milk and sugar added, and finally some chocolates and hot chocolate, freshly made with the beans we'd ground. We also had a cocoa face mask painted on to our faces, to make sure we got the most out of the beans.

In general, most of my time in Minca was spent trying to cool off. Sitting in the hotel's pool, the river which ran past the back of the hotel, taking a trip to yet more waterfalls, and then at night, sitting in hammocks, chatting and having a few drinks with Johnny, Rachel and Emily (all from the wedding) and Nelson (the chef from the hostel who joined us each night). Nelson cooked particularly delicious food, some of the best I found in Colombia. He also loved to talk in his broken English about how we are at one with the world, each other, and our energies. We let him know he could speak to us in Spanish if it was easier for him. He switched to Spanish, which turned out to be just as broken as his English. It turns out he was just very stoned.