Coffee Cultural Landscape

This review is not intended to be a review of the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia generally because I was only physically in the buffer zone of this World Heritage Site. Specifically, this review is based on my visit of a coffee farm near a small town named Salento. While small portions of the World Heritage Site is within the political boundaries of Salento municipality, the town of Salento, as most know of it, is neither a part of the core zone nor the buffer zone

However, if you are in this pretty and somewhat touristy town of Salento, you should have no trouble arranging a coffee farm tour, some of which will be within the core or the buffer zone. I visited Las Acacia Coffee farm, which is nestled in the green mountain valleys near Rio Navarco and Rio Quindio. The photo accompanying this review is a view from the road in front of the farm, but facing away from the farm.

The Coffee Cultural Landscape near Salento is very pleasant to view and explore, but to be frank, you should be visiting Salento less for its small participation in the World Heritage Site, but more for its proximity to Valle de Cocora. Valle de Cocora, which is not within the World Heritage Site boundaries, is a striking valley filled with incredibly tall wax palm trees. The loop hiking trail (2-3 hours, moderate difficulty) is fantastic and strongly recommended.

It is really telling that the 5 reviews of the Coffee Cultural Landscape so far focused fully or at least partly on the boundaries of this WHS. It reminded me of a WH travelers group T-shirt suggestion (made by Samuel) that promoted the slogan “Are we in the core zone yet?”. Well, I will focus on the coffee production instead as the ‘tick’ should consist of having seen/experienced the OUV in addition to setting foot in a certain area.

What makes Colombian coffee farming (especially in and around the selected areas) different from others? Most farms are small-scale family operations using manual labour, shade-grown coffee is the traditional system and there is a strong community focus on coffee production in all aspects of life. I decided to look for these characteristics south of Salento, in an area called Palestina. Here there are a number of coffee farms that are open to visitors. The biggest (which even needs pre-booking) is El Ocaso, one of the most popular among English-speaking tourists is Don Elias, but I went for the more low-key El Recuerdo. I hiked there in just over an hour from Salento on a pleasant path, where the coffee plants that had been absent so far on my travels in this region became more and more prominent in the surrounding landscape.

El Recuerdo is a small, organic farm that applies polyculture. Besides coffee, they grow fruits and herbs for their own use. They adhere to the principles of the …

My previous review for this WHS explained how, in Nov 2019, we determined that we had visited 4 towns in the core area (Zone D) of the “Coffee Cultural Landscape” (CCL). We also visited a number of neighbouring “Veredas” (or “rural areas”) including some in “core” areas and some in “buffer zones”. So, what did we make of this WHS - what was its “Heritage value” and was there a coherent story to tell?

We didn’t take a “Finca Tour” in the CCL as we had already done so in other parts of the World where coffee is grown. However, in other coffee producing areas of Colombia we had pleasant and close interactions with “Campesinos”, visiting and talking to them in their homes and seeing them preparing and drying the coffee there from “plant” to “sack”. We had also visited the town of Inza (nr Tierradentro) on its coffee market day and concluded that it was difficult to envisage an area more reliant on the coffee business than it was – certainly the CCL isn’t any more so. See this article about Inza's small coffee growers. Which raises the question as to what is so “special” about the inscribed CCL which raises it above (or at least makes it different from) the multitude of non-inscribed coffee producing areas in Colombia?

It isn’t the quality of the coffee either. We asked Colombians we met whether the coffee from that area was the “best” in Colombia. It appears that it …

As of May 2023 a number of the links referred to in my 2 reviews of CCL are broken. Many (but not all) are still available if you enter the link into Wayback Machine

As previous reviewers have identified, the first problem when making a visit to the Coffee CL WHS is to determine where exactly the boundaries are and how you “know” if you are/have been inside them. The execrable maps provided on the UNESCO Web site (Michael Ayers - I agree with every word you say!) show 6 inscribed “landscape areas” (or “Zones”) which cover a large area of central/western mountainous Colombia. I have studied those maps (and other sources), both before and after our travels, trying to make sense of them and, before reviewing any of the areas we visited, I will cover below the conclusions I reached and suggestions as to how others might use the available sources to determine their own visits to this WHS ensuring that they visit a core area if they so wish! If the detailed boundaries of the CCL are of no interest to you then please read no further!

The best entrée to making sense of the boundaries is via the Nomination file. The Executive Summary on PDF Pages 10/11 states that “The Coffee Cultural Landscape (PCC) covers areas of 47 municipalities spread over four Colombian departments” (these in turn are spread across the 6 “Zones” so a few departments, e.g Risaralda, have areas in more …

We finally made it to a WHS my wife was more excited about than I was. I knew we would pass through this WHS somewhere along the road between Armenia and Salento at the very least but like others before us, were unsure of the exact boundaries. So we adopted our own interpretation of what we were supposed to be seeing/doing there. For the cultural part we visited Salento and nearby Filandia, both nearly identical in appearance with pretty, colourful buildings spreading outwards for a few block radius from their central squares. This is tourist central, especially on the weekend with all the local tourists day-tripping in.

We also observed the landscape within the core zone, both as we passed through but also from several viewpoints around Salento and especially Filandia where there is a tall wooden observation tower from which you can see all the surrounding villages as well as Armenia. There wasn't as much coffee growing here as we expected considering the importance of the crop to the local economy. We visited a family run coffee finca too and took the tour. It might've been within the buffer zone but we aren't sure. This seemed a fair example with their traditional methods still preserved unlike some of the larger, commercial operations. We learned quite a bit in the process and found it worthwhile. My wife insisted on drinking copious amounts of local coffee so we nailed that part too ;) 

Visited in February 2019.

Like many members, I am often bewildered when trying to determine exactly what I am supposed to see when visiting a Cultural Landscape site. Colombia's recently-inscribed Coffee Cultural Landscape is a perfect example of that.

As I prepared my recent visit, there was a map available on the UNESCO page for this site that, in theory, gives the location of the core- and buffer-zones of this site. However, the map is close to impossible to read easily, seemingly being created from whatever public-domain map its creators could find. Text labels for cities and towns are sometimes in the wrong place, and the roadways, and other landmarks, are also not very clear. Nevertheless, after staring at this map for a long time, I was able to determine that I would pass through two sections of the core zone on my recent cycling trip, namely the town of Anserma (presumably all of the city center is not included, but the area just beyond that is), where I spent one night, and the roadway connecting the towns of Viterbo and Apia. 

There is certainly coffee being grown in these areas, though maybe not as much as you might expect. There is also a lot of sugarcane and bananas, though the latter are often used as a shade crop for coffee. I did not notice any sort of buildings or other infrastructures involved in the processing of coffee in these two areas.

The only informational items …

First of all - it is not easy to distinguish what exactly was inscribed as Coffee Cultural Landscape - particular coffee farms, land area, towns and villages. All available maps do not show inscribed zone, there are no signs of World Heritage in the places (yet, November 2011) that is for sure inscribed as UNESCO heritage. But for sure the landscapes are spectacular although I haven't seen any difference between inscribed part and non-inscribed.

I was visiting Salamina, passing through Chinchina, travelling around Salento, Manizales, Armenia and Pereira. Those areas are either directly inscribed as WHS (Salamina, Chinchina) or located in close vicinity of Coffee Cultural Landscape. Salamina is truly remarkable (nice colonial town, sourrounded by high mountains, with lovely old houses, one the most interesting places in Colombia). Chinchina looks to be quite ordinary, like many other towns.