Traveling-with-TLC

January 30 – February 2, 2025

Our next adventure was on the opposite side of Manizales at a Resort and Conference Center jointly run by the government and Jaun Valdez Coffee Distributors ( if you are of a “certain age”, you will remember the coffee commercials of yore)

Turns out it is an excellent tribute to the coffee culture. We have seen many men transporting bags of coffee that totally reminded us of the fictional Juan Valdez. Anyway, I digress,

Our driver to the resort is a wonderful man, Alejandro. He offered to take us on a quick tour of his hometown. We liked him so much, we hired him to come back and take us to Cali later in the trip.

Alejandro took us up to an overlook and monument park. Manizales is a city of about 400,000 set in the midst of the Andes mountains. I think there are 4-5 peaks and all the valleys in between covered with humanity. The overlook was an incredible view of the coffee country surrounding Manizales. I didn’t know people could populate or grow anything on such steep hills.

I found the monument very touching. It is an allegory of the struggles the people (and animals) of Manizales had to build their city. Alejandro is pictured here with Ted. He offered to buy us an ice cream and you know we didn’t turn that down!!

The hotel was very nice. I was excited because they actually had a hairdryer! Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

We took a guided tour of the grounds which includes: a pavillion built mostly of bamboo (a protype for the World’s Fair in Hanover), an orchid garden, a bonzai garden, a butterfly house and BIRDS (of course!). Our guide, Sergio, is in the first picture.

Here are a few birds:

Meals were very good at a 4 star restuarant on site. The complementary breakfast was a buffet feast! It was so good, even the birds liked it. No one besides us seemed to care that we were sharing the meal!

One of our days at Pensamiento, we hired an Uber and went to the Mall. Malls in Colombia are noisy, they allow dogs, and the food courts are large. Other than that they are like Malls in the US. I bought a really pretty shirt – which is not of much interest to anyone but me. I thought I’d share anyway…