Colombia 2025 – Pijao

Pijao

Pijao is a charming municipality nestled in the southeastern part of Quindío, Colombia, right in the heart of the country’s famed Coffee Cultural Landscape. It is “Salento without the tourists,” and offers traditional Colombian architecture with colorful doors and windows, minus the crowds. The town center features a vibrant plaza surrounded by colonial-style buildings, the Church of San José de Pijao, and the Town Hall. The countryside is magnificient, and it is possible to see the enormous wax-palms without the crowds around the Cocora valley.

What we did there

We went from Salento to Pijao by bus via Armenia, a trip that totalled around two hours. The first day we spent in the town and its outskirts, while the second was spent on a day trip into the mountains.

Day 1

The first day, the same day we arrived to Pijao, we spent walking around the town. We found a very cheap and nice lunch place, and strolled around at random.

Our host at the hotel recommended us to go to ”La Pedregosa”, which was quite a surprise. They served some snacks, had a place to see colobries, and gave us a quite weird and really nice tour on the premises, showing how to make coffee while also talking about the rivers and giving a lot of descriptions about what various stones and rocks might look like. We also got to dress as coffe pickers, which was fun but definitely quite tacky. We thoroughly enjouyed the trip, and learnt a bit as well.

Day 2

The second day we organised a wonderful tour with a guide, where we went to see the wax-palms, hear about them, saw some exotic birds like a tucan, and got a wonderful lunch at a farm.

Day 3

From Pijao we basically went all the way home to Sweden. After breakfast we took a bus to Armenia, from there we flew to Bogota where we overnighted at a place near the airport, and then flew back to Stockholmv via a long stop over in Toronto, to finally meet my wife and dog and come home.