7 Most Instagrammable Spots in Salento and the Cocora Valley, Colombia's Coffee Country

Salento sits on a ridge in Colombia's Quindío department, the best-known town of the country's coffee-growing Zona Cafetera and the gateway to the Cocora Valley, home to the wax palm, the tallest palm species on Earth and Colombia's national tree. The combination of a compact, brightly painted colonial town and a valley landscape unlike almost anywhere else has made this corner of the coffee region one of Colombia's most photographed.

1. The wax palm groves of the Cocora Valley

Wax palms found in the Cocora Valley typically reach around 45 metres, with some individual trees climbing past 60, rising directly out of green pastureland against the surrounding cloud forest and Andean peaks, a scale that makes them dominate almost every photograph taken here.

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2. The Cocora loop trail

A roughly 12-kilometre circular trail through the valley, usually walked or ridden by horse in five to six hours, climbs from open palm pasture into cloud forest before looping back, giving photographers a changing backdrop across a single hike.

3. Calle Real, Salento's main street

Salento's Calle Real runs through the town centre lined with single-storey adobe buildings in saturated colours, their terracotta roofs and geranium-filled balconies largely unchanged in style for well over a century.

4. The Mirador de Salento viewpoint

A staircase of 238 steps climbs from the end of Calle Real to a hilltop viewpoint over Salento's rooftops and the surrounding coffee-growing valley, the town's standard sunset and golden-hour vantage point.

5. A working coffee farm

Several family-run coffee farms just outside Salento offer walking tours through their plantations, ending with a tasting; the rows of coffee bushes against the hill country make for a distinctly different, greener frame than the town itself.

6. Jeep Willys parked in the main square

Vintage Willys jeeps, in use since the mid-20th century to move coffee, produce and passengers across the region's steep terrain, are still the standard way to reach the Cocora Valley from Salento, and their battered, brightly liveried bodywork parked in the main square has become a recognisable motif of its own.

7. Acaime hummingbird reserve

At the far end of the Cocora loop trail, a small private reserve draws numerous hummingbird species to its feeders, a close-up, slower-paced contrast to the sweeping palm and mountain views on the rest of the walk.

Traveller tips

• Jeep Willys leave Salento's main square for the Cocora Valley on a roughly hourly schedule and are the standard way to reach the trailhead.
• Start the Cocora loop early; afternoon cloud cover regularly rolls in and can obscure the valley's higher sections.
• Salento sits at over 1,800 metres, so mornings and evenings are cool even though the coffee region's daytime climate is mild.
• The nearest airport is in Armenia or Pereira, both under an hour's drive from Salento.