Our longest bus ride on this trip clocked in at a whopping 24 hours straight. We had another one that was 40 hours total, but we were able to stop half way through and sleep in a real bed. Therefore, it really goes down in the books as two 20-hour bus rides. 

Needless to say, we spend a lot of time on buses while traveling through South America. Down here there is not an extensive train system like Europe, and airplanes are much more expensive, so buses are our primary means of transportation. 

So how do we pass all this windshield time?

What do coffee and a game of explosives have in common? A little coffee-growing, Tejo-throwing town called Salento, that’s what.

After a month-long siesta in Buenos Aires (yup…we loved it so much we went back), we are now on the road again. This time we’re exploring the once off-limits Colombia. After spending our first few days in the country in the capital city of Bogota, we were itching to indulge ourselves in Colombia’s “other drug,” coffee.

To our surprise it’s actually a bit difficult to find a great cup of joe in the big cities of Colombia, a country known worldwide as one of the top coffee-growing nations. Turns out that Colombians export their best beans and keep the second tier crop for themselves.

So to get our fix, we planned a short trip straight to the caffeine source, a coffee growing region in the hills northwest of Bogota, known as the “coffee triangle,” and its little charming town of Salento. 

For just $10 per person we got to experience what The Observer named as number one of the "top 50 sporting things to do before you die." And just like our Turkish bath experience that I posted about last week, this was another one of those classic "we're definitely not in America anymore" moments.

Suuuuuuperclásico. This seemed to be the word of the week around Mendoza when we were there last February. Waiters, locals, tourists, and everyone in between were chattering about the upcoming fútball match between the bitter Argentinian fútbol (soccer) rivals, River Plate and Boca Juniors. 

They come once per year to play a match on neutral turf, in Mendoza, and fortunately for my sports-addicted husband, we just so happened to be there that same week.