Sevilla

We heard from our Swiss friend Marcel that the little city of Sevilla is a good stop in the coffee-growing region. His scuttlebutt was that the coffee served there is mas suave than that in other places. Certainly the people are wonderfully friendly and the town is off the gringo trail. We arrived on the Thursday before the 14th annual bandola music festival, and checked ourselves into the Super Hotel. The Super Hotel is not super but proved to be a great place to meet people associated with the festival. We hooked up with Carlos and Oscar, 2 guys from Cali in charge of lighting for the set, and a radio journalist named John who included a personal welcome to "Hilary y Mike de Los Angeles, California" during an announcement he made from the stage.




Friday during the day we walked around town with Carlos and Oscar, trying new and delicious fruits and talking. Friday and Saturday nights had bands playing until 3am, and we spent much of that time and beyond jumping around in the crowd in the main plaza. Carlos and Oscar traded off responsibilities on stage, with one or the other hanging out with us. Through them we met Victoria, a 20-something in a pink fedora, and through her much of her well-lubricated family. At some point we started talking with Ivan, a Colombian-born guy who has lived much of his life in Tampa. He was in Colombia meeting many family members for the first time, and he suggested we meet for fruit salad at his cousin's ice cream & pizza shop Saturday morning. To close out Friday evening our group went salsa dancing at a nightclub called Baghdad, complete with posters of Saddam Hussein & Yasser Arafat on the walls.



Saturday morning we had an impressive fruit salad with Ivan and his cousin Cesar before they suggested that we drive out to see Cesar's recently constructed finca or country house. The landscape of the eje cafetero is lush and green with nonstop banana trees and coffee plants. Cesar's adorable daughter Manuela came along and we were in heaven in the beautiful setting talking with such warm friendly people.




Sunday morning Carlos and Oscar tracked us down at our favorite breakfast cafeteria, having my favorite pericos or scrambled eggs with tomato and green onions. Julian, the warm and jovial owner of the cafe surprised us with a bag of local coffee as a going away present. We got our backpacks from the Super Hotel and said goodbye to Miriam and the cute kids there, and Carlos and Oscar walked us to the bus terminal. After warning us not to accept any bananas from strangers they put us on the bus to Armenia from where we would connect to Bogota.