Colombia: full of beans

Luis talked about coffee the way winemakers speak about wine. It was all flavours and notes and finishes. Then he had the idea that we should do pairings, and the whisky appeared: different vintages of single malts with various coffees. Bottles and shot glasses joined the clutter of cups. At some point — after the 10-year-old Jameson, I think — I booked a ticket to the city of Pereira, an hour’s flight from Bogota in the Zona Cafetera: the coffee region.

“You won’t regret it, my friend,” Luis said, slapping my knee. “The Zona Cafetera is another century, as well as another country.”

I smiled inanely, no longer sure what he was talking about.

Slung between two long spurs of the Andes, about 100 miles due west of Bogota, the rolling hills of the Zona Cafetera are a sylvan green world, laced with coffee plantations and citrus orchards, dotted with small towns and colonial farmhouses. Brightly painted vintage Jeeps clatter along roads, past flower farms and forests of bamboo, while wizened vintage cowboys in big hats stand around village squares, chewing tobacco and saying remarkably little. It is also an ideal terroir for cultivating arabica.

I had imagined myself sipping delightful coffee in a civilised way, while overlooking green plantations. What I hadn’t imagined was a soap opera. Luis might like to claim that the Zona Cafetera is another country, but actually it is still sexy, tempestuous Colombia. Turn on the television at any hour of the day and you will find a soap opera, known here as a telenovela. Colombians love them because they are such an accurate reflection of their lives. Even in rural areas, beneath that tranquil surface, a turbulent, caffeine-charged, rum-fuelled life is bubbling. In five days, I came across a spurned fiancé, a cowboy playboy, an estranged father, a couple of cases of adultery, several betrayals and rumours of a murder, possibly involving snakes. And it all kicked off at Hacienda Bambusa.

Horse play: riding out from Hacienda Bambusa

JON ATTENBOROUGH

I arrived at Bambusa after dark, a sprawling farmhouse of balconies and galleries round a cobbled courtyard. The rooms were full of books and art, and the sound of crickets filled the night. “They are singing love songs,” Pablo, the manager, said in a melancholy manner. “Each is listening for the one cricket whose song perfectly complements its own.”

Pablo had joined me on the terrace for a glass of rum. An Argentinian, he had moved to Colombia for a girl. Pablo’s girl was getting married the following week, but sadly not to Pablo. “Love,” he sighed, quoting Charles Bukowski, “is a dog from hell.”

I woke to hummingbirds playing tag on my balcony. After a dip in the pool, in lush tropical gardens, and a home-cooked breakfast served with the world’s best coffee, there was back country to explore.

Carlos, the guide, and I saddled up and set off with a wrangler from a nearby estancia. We rode along a lane lined with colossal breadfruit trees. Jungles of feathery bamboo loomed over old farmhouses with porches bearing rocking chairs and hammocks. Spectacular birds glided back and forth across the lanes: saffron finches, acorn woodpeckers, fork-tailed flycatchers and shiny cowbirds.

Our young wrangler had a hat wider than his shoulders. “I just love being in the saddle,” he sighed.

I don’t think he was just talking about horses. He was a fellow with appetites. After a detailed account of his breakfast — half a dozen eggs, rice, beans, cheese, plantain, fresh bread, custard tarts and mugs of coffee sweetened with sugar-cane pulp — he turned to his love life, a subject on which he was soliciting advice.

The wrangler had three lovers — a divorcée much older than him, a married woman and a teenage girlfriend, who was pressing him to get married. There had been a spot of trouble, he confessed, with the husband of the married one. Apparently, the horse manure and the hoofprints on the front lawn had aroused suspicions. In the short term, I advised him to leave the horse at home. In the long term, I thought it best to focus on his girlfriend. She was more likely to have the cricket song he was after.

The cowboy lover went off with the horses about half a mile from the hacienda so we could walk home. We cut through a bamboo forest, a dappled world of long stalks and shafts of light. Deep in one of the glades, a picnic awaited us, sent up from the Bambusa: a cooler of fruit and wine. Carlos pointed out the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow plant, a natural hallucinogenic that Amazonian tribesmen used to help them see the jaguar god. In reality, we saw a great horned owl, which sailed silently through the upper storey of the bamboo to disappear into channels of sunlight.

On the way home, we passed the Widow’s House, a ramshackle place surrounded by brooding trees. According to local myth, some decades ago the widow’s husband was having an affair. Skilled in handling snakes, his wife had drained the venom from a viper and slipped it into her husband’s drink. Despite the fact that this was never proven, there is still a fear of the widow and her mythical power with poison.

Coffee was probably introduced to Colombia by the Jesuits in the early 18th century, along with original sin, sexual guilt and a great many overly decorated churches. By the end of the 19th century, it had become a significant commercial product, accounting for 50% of the country’s exports. By the 1920s, the export and marketing of Colombian coffee was handled by an umbrella organisation, the Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros.

But an increasing number of growers now want to market independently; Luis, at Amor Perfecto, is one of their champions. Plantation owners are finding that, as with wine, it’s boutique coffees connected to a particular estate, with particular conditions and standards and history, that interest discerning consumers.

At the Casa Vieja plantation, I was being shown around by the enthusiastic Santiago Botero, who led me up misty aisles of arabica plants, extolling their virtues. Arabica, according to Santiago, is the pinot noir of the coffee world, a more delicate plant than the hardier robusta, but worth the trouble for its finer taste. And Colombia, he said proudly, is unique in the coffee world for growing only arabica. Santiago spread his arms to encompass the family estate. “We want people to understand how our coffee is connected to this place,” he said. “To these hills, our lives, our history.”

Early the next day, as mists were still uncurling from the clay-coloured waters of La Vieja River, we drove to the village of Puerto Alejandria. Barely more than a hamlet now, with an ageing collection of river warehouses, this was where the conquistador Jorge Robledo encountered a female chieftain in the 16th century; her spectacular ceremonial gold is now in the Gold Museum, in Bogota.

A bamboo raft was waiting on the riverbank. The boatman, Jorge, appeared from a house. We skipped aboard and pushed off, Jorge piloting us on the wide, shallow river with a long pole.

Orange butterflies danced back and forth across the raft. A black ibis with a malevolent curved beak eyed us from the bank. Kingfishers perched patiently on branches. A tall white heron stood sentinel among boulders, rising as we approached, flying downstream in slow motion above its own reflection.

On this bright sunny morning, adrift on a raft on a river, among a tumble of green hills, the world seemed fine and simple and delightful. But, of course, I was waiting for Jorge’s melodrama. He didn’t keep me waiting long.

Having asked politely about my family, it all came tumbling out. His father was threatening to disown him, his girlfriend had turned nasty, his life was capsizing. “But what can we do about these things anyway?” he eventually sighed. “Que sera, sera.”

“Let us drink coffee,” he continued, opening a Thermos. “You will like this. A very good estate near Manizales. Slight chocolatey taste.”

And so we drifted downstream, sipping our mid-morning coffee, with Jorge poling carefully over the rapids as the birds came and went, and for the next hour or two, all was tranquil in the Zona Cafetera.

Stanley Stewart was a guest of Avianca and Plan South America, which has a five-night trip to Colombia’s coffee country from £1,485pp, including return flights to Pereira from Bogota, three nights at Hacienda Bambusa (haciendabambusa.com), two nights at Hacienda Buenavista (haciendabuenavista.com.co), a boat trip on La Vieja River and private transfers (020 7993 6930, plansouthamerica.com). Avianca flies to Bogota from Heathrow; from £500 return (avianca.com). The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against all but essential travel to some parts of Colombia; see gov.uk

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/colombia This is an edited version of an article in the July issue of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, our glossy sister title, on sale now, priced £4.20. To get the next three issues for £5 (UK direct debit only), call 01795 414827 or visit sttmsub.co.uk, quoting STFIL17. See the website for full T&Cs