Feature picture: coffee cherries getting ripe

Minca was a peaceful little village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. The village was only a 45 min bus drive from Santa Marta. What an incredible change from city life to mountainous paradise. Minca and it’s surroundings was such a nice green area, we fell in love the minute we arrived. We knew the weather was likely to get rainy in the early afternoon so we started immediately to explore the beautiful scenery. Not having had a proper plan where to go we just wandered along and ended up after about a 2,5 hour walk at a nice little coffee and cocoa farm named San Rafael.

San Rafael Finca and Coffee plantation

Finca San Rafael is a traditional Eco-friendly and organic Coffee and Cacao Farm.

Some birds

Though I have to say I was cheating. Unfortunately we didn’t do a bird watching tour, but there was a kind of museum in Minca and I borrowed some of their pics…just to show what we have missed. Sadly also no names for the birds, but I thought they looked great!

Museo del Oro Tairona – Casa de la Aduana

Because it was raining like hell, we took advantage of a very short rain break and jumped in a bus which took us back to Santa Marta. Being back in the city I remembered that Santa Marta had a Gold Museum. Actually we were not that keen on going there but it turned out to be a very good decision. I thought the museum was about gold only, instead we figured out that we could explore stories of the past from that corner of Colombia’s Caribbean region. Very interesting and I wished we had visited it earlier to learn about the history and the indigenous people.