Hi guys!
Today we’re going to do a hike at Valle de Cocora outside of Salento in Colombia.
We’re going to see some wax palm trees which are the tallest palm trees in the entire world.
They’re also the national tree of Colombia.
After about twenty minutes crammed into a Jeep we’ve arrived at Valle de Cocora.
There’s a short way and a long way.
We have decided to go the long way.
So we’ll see how this goes.
This our first glimpse of the magnificent wax palm trees.
They’re enormously tall.
We just passed this couple coming back from this long hike
and the girl just looked like she was in hell.
She just could barely breathe, like, she wanted to die.
And her boyfriend or whoever was behind her like -
Eating chips like.
Just like a walk in the park.
No big deal.
And I was like, ‘That’s probably what it's gonna look like when we come back from this hike.'
I’m gonna be like...
See these smiles? You won’t see much more of them.
So the beginning of the trail is kind of flat through a valley and now it’s starting to go uphill.
There’s a place at the top that we’re trying to reach before we start making our way down.
It’s a white horse!
Make a wish!
He’s licking his face.
We have to cross the river and there’s this really cool suspension bridge
that looks really precarious and I’m really excited to walk across it.
Isn’t that fun?
The part we’re at now is very, very muddy and quite steep.
I can’t imagine doing this in the rain.
It would be quite treacherous.
We just saw a girl who fell down.
She’s OK but you really have to be careful here.
There’s one river crossing here where you have to cross a couple of logs that are tied together
and it’s pretty tight so if you come to do this hike
I would definitely wear some very sturdy shoes.
That was a rush.
We’ve been on this trail for around three hours now
and the sun goes down in just a couple more hours.
So it’s a bit of a race against the clock to make sure that we’re not out here without any lights
because that would not be good at all.
So hopefully we will make it up the steepest part here to the top where there’s a hummingbird sanctuary
and hopefully there we’ll be able to sit down and have a drink and then make our way back down
while we still have some sunlight.
So we’ve had a bit of a twist on the trail and this is now the trail.
Yeah.
That’s the trail.
Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, can’t go around it.
Gonna have to go through it.
It’s half a kilometre more to the top and I’m running a little low on gas
so Marc’s helping me.
He’s pushing me.
There’s another bridge crossing with a couple of logs
and I know there are hummingbirds and water on the other side of this so let’s go.
We’ve now been on the trail about four hours.
We did manage to get to the top and saw the hummingbirds which is really, really cool.
I think I even saw their cute little tongues as they flew over to have a drink of water
- it was maybe sugar water.
That was really neat to see and now we are making our way back down the trail
so I think it should be a lot easier from here on out and apparently the best is saved for last
on this particular trail because all of the wax palm trees are at the end.
So I can’t wait to see that.
I’m pretty out of breath now.
There’s a lot of fog or mist.
It almost feels like we’ve hiked so high that we’re now up in a cloud.
One thing about this trail is that there aren’t really any route markers.
When I say there aren’t really: there are no route markers.
So it’s a good idea to have a map or some semblance of an idea of where you want to go
and as someone who doesn’t hike very often I’m definitely a beginner.
I don’t really think this is a beginner trail.
The trails are quite steep.
There’s some really precarious river crossings and sometimes you have to hike directly through a stream
so I don’t think that’s beginner.
So just be aware of that if you’re planning to come here.
We’re still not all the way to the top.
I thought when we passed the hummingbirds that it was all downhill.
Definitely not.
We have to actually hike up to what looks like the ridge of the mountain
before we can start making our way down towards those wax palm trees that I’m holding out to see.
So I’m gonna go further now.
Wax palms are the national tree of Colombia and they were very close to extinction
and they’re still really rare.
This is one of the only places that you can still see them.
They were used historically for making wax candles and every Easter for their palm fronds on Palm Sunday.
But now they are being rehabilitated here.
They’re absolutely beautiful, extremely tall, and we’re about to see a whole lot more of them.
We’re finally walking down the mountain.
All of the uphill is done, the bugs are coming out, the sun is almost done so we need to get going
to make sure we see these palm trees.
You know you’re the last ones on the trail when they lock you in.
So I’m gonna have to climb this fence.
Try to climb this fence.
That looked hard with a backpack.
With a backpack - huge backpack.
Nice work.
We can see them coming around the bend!
Oh my god!
There are so many.
Wow!
Unfortunately it has started to rain.
We are walking beside the wax palm trees
but it’s about 6PM and the last Jeep heads back to Salento quite shortly.
So we’re trying to get there and, if not, we’ll just have to walk.
Unfortunately, the rain makes it a little trickier to see the trees
but we did see them on the way in so that was amazing.
I’m so glad that we started at that time when it was really good weather.
But despite the rain and it getting darker now it’s still incredible to see these wax palm trees.
It’s like something out of a Dr. Seuss book to be honest.
They just look very Other.
They’re so tall.
I believe they grow up to about sixty-five metres
and seeing their silhouette against the rainy sky is really beautiful.
After seven hours, twenty kilometres, two hundred and eighty-two floors,
and nearly thirty thousand steps, we have finished the hike.
We are back in Salento.
Unfortunately we missed the last Willy’s Jeep -
the best and cheapest form of transportation back to Salento.
They leave at 6:30PM and we didn’t realize that but we were able to get a different taxi so that worked out.
The next thing we didn’t realize that became pretty important rather quickly
is that they actually lock the gate at the bottom of the hill.
You finish in this big pasture with these huge palm trees
and the gate was locked at the end of the trail with a huge padlock with barbed wire.
So Marc had to go over the barbed wire fence.
I ended up going through the barbed wire fence in the rain, in the dark.
It was not the ideal way to end the day but we still had an amazing time.
I am really glad that we went to Valle de Cocora.
It’s beautiful.
We saw so many things we have never seen before.
I hope that you enjoyed the hike as well and, if you haven’t already,
please subscribe to my channel for more travel videos and I’ll see you in my next one.
And they are the cheapest form of transportation to get back here.
So we had to take a…
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