Visit Pijao travel guide: the slow village of the coffee region

In Colombia, as we keep telling you, you just have to want it to enjoy a landscape or village that is as beautiful, if not more so, than the most famous tourist spots. The village of Pijao, close to the famous Salento, is one of these far-from-the-radar destinations, but well worth the detour.

In this post, we tell you about our experience in Pijao, where we spent a few days during our last trip to Colombia. Pijao offered us the chance to meet many new people, enjoy the typical atmosphere of Colombia’s little-visited villages and discover some wonderful projects !

Discovering Pijao and its history

What to do in Pijao

We arrive in Pijao in the late afternoon. The road from Armenia is magnificent. The village is located in a deep valley where the scenery is truly spectacular. It’s a real change of scenery from the gentle mountains of the area around Filandia.

What strikes you first is the authentic atmosphere of the village, with sunburnt faces and hard work in the fields. Here, most of the inhabitants work the land and the culture is authentically “campesina”.

We make our way to our accommodation, which we leave one night later. It’s a pity, the place was nice in an old colonial house, but the owner was rather unsympathetic. We’ve since learned that the hotel has closed. Karma when you hold us.

We spent the rest of our stay at Flora del Rio, a place we recommend 100 times over. Our fond memories of Pijao come in part from our meeting with Pablo and Melissa, the owners of Flora del Rio.

We’ll always remember their long evening chats, and hope they’re back in Canada where they went to see if the grass was greener (or not).

At Flora del Rio, we were lucky enough to be able to contemplate many birds, and we took a few nature walks in the surrounding area. Pijao has a lot to offer in this respect. We had a sensory experience on the trail that leads up into the forest from the river. And when the sun came out, we didn’t hesitate for a second to take a dip in the cold waters of the river!

We didn’t have time to climb up to the wax palm forest and the Paramo de Chili above Pijao, but we can’t recommend this rarely-visited experience enough.

We spent our few days visiting Pijao, strolling through the village streets to meet the locals. The atmosphere here is that of Colombian villages, where every casual conversation turns into a life story.

You’ll have to wander the narrow streets to see the colorful houses, eat a homemade ice cream, stop for a coffee, listen to old tango records and, above all, hear the stories of the village and its inhabitants.

Pijao is a martyred village. In the early 2000s, armed conflict invaded the village and its mountains, and the population lived in terror for ten years. Today, it’s a peaceful village, so much so that it’s been awarded the “slow village” label.

If we had to remember one thing about Pijao, it would be colors, encounters and life stories.

Pijao, which wanted to be a Slow village

What to do in Pijao, Quindio

When we arrived in Pijao, we had in mind to find out more about this famous“slow village” we’d heard about in posts about this unique project to have a Colombian village labeled by the worldwide“Cittaslow” network.

In our imagination, Pijao was a kind of model village where citizen initiatives were ahead of the rest of the country, where inhabitants and government officials had joined forces to develop another way of living locally.

In reality – and it’s always good to be confronted with it – Pijao is a village where, as is often the case, initiatives that are a little different are more or less supported by the population and local authorities, including the “slow” label project.

Above all, we’re going to discover a village that’s still in its original state, with an atmosphere typical of the villages of the coffee region, rooted in agricultural culture, large coffee fincas, day laborers and weekends spent drinking to the sound of the four discotheques in the main square.

Throughout our stay, we talked to the people, the pros, the cons, the supporters of the project like Monica Flores, a pioneer in the early days, when it was necessary to make people understand the notions of “slowing down” in a village where nobody had the impression of living at 100 an hour.

But in the end, whether the “Pijao Cittaslow” project has developed to the extent Monica would have liked or not, this initiative will have had the merit of moving part of the population and talking about the way Pijao wants to develop tourism.

Best things to do in Pijao

Visit Pijao in Colombia

Pijao is a village where you really should talk to people. Exchanges are easy here, and behind every door you’ll find unique life stories.

Wax Palm Forest

Here’s one of Pijao’s best-kept secrets: its wax palm forest! Yes, the same wax palms found in the Cocora, Carbonera and Samaria valleys.

Before the arrival of the Spanish colonists, the coffee region was covered with these palm forests, of which only a few traces remain in some places today. And Pijao is one of those places, less well-known than Cocora , where you can still admire these giant palm trees!

Paramo de Chili

Above Pijao lies a Paramo hidden at an altitude of over 3.700m, the Paramo de Chili, a little-visited spot where you can admire the famous frailejones and their fabulous ecosystem!

Bird watching

You don’t have to go far to discover the incredible diversity of bird species that can be admired in Pijao. This is true throughout the Quindio department, which is probably the place where we’ve had the chance to see the most birds in Colombia so far. If you get the chance, don’t hesitate to take a Bird Watching tour with an ornithologist guide. Always exciting!

Finca de café

There are various coffee tours in Pijao where you can visit a finca and discover the coffee production process “from plant to cup”. We didn’t do one in Pijao, as we went to Buenavista, a small village nearby.

Coffee tasting

La tienda del buen vivir

Cristina (Monica’s sister) runs this tiny store where she introduces visitors to Pijao coffees produced exclusively by women. Passionate about coffee, Cristina is an engaging character with lots of stories to tell.

La Floresta

Right next door is La Floresta, another coffee tasting place where you can drink the region’s finest vintages.

El Patio

A village nursery where Doña Ligia recovers medicinal plants. You can buy plants here, of course, but you can also sit on the terrace of the little café and taste Doña Ligia’s herbal teas. Herbal teas made from fruit and plants with many virtues, and we’ll be delighted to explain them to you!

Bar Social

All around the Plaza de Pijao, there are numerous cafés where you can have a drink, but only one has a century-old coffee machine! But it’s the atmosphere of the café, with its billiard tables (Colombia’s national sport), its old cash register and Fabio’s character, that’s worth the detour. A must-see place where locals come to drink coffee or tea in the late afternoon.

Bar Los recuerdos

A truly singular place in Pijao, a bar for nostalgic drunks that guards the memories accumulated by Gustavo Toro, a film buff with a passion for old LP s, which fill the walls of the back room! Today it’s Gustavo’s daughter who has taken up the torch, a little against her will, without really knowing what to do with this heritage and how to make it evolve.

El Porton

Alittle store that stands out in Pijao! A group of young people from the village, students “in the city”, have opened a designer boutique where you can find a variety of products by young local artists and designers.

So, if you ask yourself“what to do in Pijao“, you’ll find that there’s always something to do, and in addition to our recommendations, there’s sure to be plenty more to discover.

Buenavista

What to do around Pijao

Located just a few kilometers from Pijao, the village of Buenavista is also famous for its coffee. We went there to take Don Leo’s famous coffee tour. A rather unlikely encounter, in any case we didn’t expect to hear his life story, which is a bit of the point of this visit: the story of a coffee grower who became a cocalero out of necessity , and his crazy journey to become a coffee grower again.

In terms of coffee cultivation and production techniques, we’ve been on more exciting tours, particularly San Agustin. Here, the visit is most interesting for the meeting with Don Leo, a real character who has understood that his story can fascinate tourists.

But the story Don Leo tells us is the story of thousands of Colombian peasants who, to escape armed conflict or for economic reasons, have sometimes found themselves in the infernal spiral of illicit crops…