Buenavista - Adventure in the Mountains

I have a bad habit of browsing Airbnb for way too many hours, looking for the cheapest nicest looking places around the world, and then basing my travels off of those locations . Recently, I found a really beautiful looking Airbnb only three hours away from Cali in a tiny little town tucked away into the mountains of Quindio. That town is called Buenavista, and it's where we've spent the past week.

I had zero expectations, except for I thought it would be super cold because of how high it is up in the mountains. Turns out that I was wrong on both accounts: it's not that high up (4,865 feet) and it's not at all cold - it's actually super hot.

This is the perfect town to visit if you want to relax. With a population of only 3,220 people, this town is surrounded by beautiful scenery and great hiking. Each morning, we wake up to the birds singing right outside our window. The day starts out tranquil, and it doesn't change much as the hours pass.

By the time noon rolls around, the heat starts setting in. We leave the house right after work and head out for the rest of the day to try to avoid the stifling heat you'll find inside. We go for walks, eat great food, and enjoy the beautiful views - it's not called "Buenavista" (good view) for nothing.

Something super cool and convenient about this town is it's proximity to other small towns and even a large city. It's about an hour away from Armenia, which has a population of 304,314, and many other small, charming towns. The roads are good, and it's super easy to go town-hopping.

Café San Alberto

If you're a fan of coffee, you definitely have to go to Café San Alberto, which advertises the best coffee...ever? I'm not sure, I don't drink coffee. Andrés does, and he says it's a super delicious light roast. I will warn you, the prices are steep.

That's something I was definitely not expecting: high prices. When we travel to small towns in Colombia, they're usually significantly cheaper than Cali. Not this time! Maybe because Buenavista is seeing more and more tourists, but the prices are much higher than either of us imagined. Luckily, the Airbnb was a bargain!

In a whole week, we've only had one mishap, which I'd call a success! We headed off to hike up to Tres Cruces (the three crosses), a lookout point from which you can see the entire town and much, much more. We were told that it would only take 45 minutes - piece of cake!

Unfortunately for us, we were so engrossed in conversation and taking in the beautiful views, that we totally missed the turn to head up to the lookout. We kept hiking and hiking, until finally, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, we asked a local where we were supposed go.

From the top of Tres Cruces

"Oh, you passed it a long time ago."

That was not what we wanted to hear. We turned back and made the decision that even though we were tired, we were going to get to the lookout. We'd walked too far to give up now! What was meant to be a 45 minute hike turned into a two hour and fifteen minute hike, but it was so worth it. The views were incredible!

The only negative about this experience is the amount of bug bites covering my entire body. At least 20 on each leg. That's my fault for not wearing bug spray - a mistake I definitely won't be repeating in the future.

Even though this hasn't been 100% vacation - we've been working while here - it's been so nice to be somewhere new, especially somewhere so relaxing. The week is coming to an end and we're heading back to Cali, but more adventures are in the lineup, and not so far away.