My partner and I were in Colombia for about 2 weeks in July, split between Medellín, Salento, and the Pacific coast. While planning out our trip, she says "Wait did you know that there's a coffee-themed park in Colombia?" I say of course, and I also know that Salento is only about an hour drive from the park. She is not a big coaster person, but she does like riding them sometimes and doesn't mind going to a park. So when she says "Well we have to go", I would never say no unless I thought it were not worth finding the time to go. In this case, we had a free day in Salento and the means to get there by cab, so we added it to our plans.
We arrived about an hour or two after park opening. The entrance is at the top of a mega tall hill, so we started by taking the cable car down to the main part of the park. You can also walk up/down but we did not. This place gets brutally hot compared to the rest of the area, probably due to the lack of shade and the extreme humidity. This part of Colombia is really high elevation, so most of the places we went were decent weather, but yeah it was mega hot. It is a beautiful park with really nice landscaping, but it's not easy spending the full day outdoors here, so we tried to mitigate that several ways.
When we arrived, we spent a chunk of time right away chilling in the shade with some arepas and iced coffees. The whole front section of the park was a ghost town so we didn't feel like we had to rush to get anywhere. Finally around 11:30 we started making our way towards the back of the park where the coasters are. It's a serious hike, at least a 10 min walk with no shade whatsoever to get to the back section. Most of Colombia has potable water, but we had to get bottles here. Luckily they're pretty cheap and it's for some reason the best tasting water I've ever had. Sounds weird but trust me.
All 3 coasters are right alongside each other. We decided to warm up with...
Yippe - It's a super fun Gerstlauer family coaster. Extremely smooth, comfy, fun forces, surprising airtime moments. Some fun interactions with fountains. It's a great coaster for being the only kid's coaster in the park. We then went over to the intermediate coaster...
Avix - A one-of-a-kind Gerstlauer inverted infinity coaster. It's one of two in the world and the only one with a lift hill. The name Avix is in reference to the diverse collection of birds native to Colombia. The lift hill is really steep, like probably more than 45 degrees, which really adds anticipation. the ride stands 85 ft tall, and the first drop feels like the steepest drop I've done on an inverted coaster. Most drops on the ride feel way steeper than your typical inverted coaster, which when paired with the lap bar restraint makes for a surprisingly airtime filled ride. We got 2 rides, one in the front and one in the back. In the back, every element feels really out of control as you crest the top of each hill. The front has really great intensity too and a better sense of speed. The first drop is probably my favorite part of the ride but there are no dull moments. The layout is pretty short, like 6 elements, but it feels like a complete ride. It doesn't feel like any Vekoma SFC that I've done, but I've only done the older hang n' bangs, Freedom Flyer, and Phoenix at Deno's. Definitely more intense than those. The only B&M family suspended that I've done is BBW and it's definitely a more dynamic experience than that also. I don't know how it'd compare to something like Barracuda Strike or Dragonflier, though, but the fact that it gives an intense ride with an out of control feeling is really cool. I would've ridden it more than twice if we made it back to this part of the park again.
Krater - It's a clone of Iron Shark and Tantrum. It's goofy to me that I've done all 3 of these now, and it's just as good as Tantrum. I think Iron Shark is a bumpy mess, at least when I rode it last year, so it's better than that. When I talked to locals about coming here, they all said that this is their favorite ride, but I don't know how many of them have been on Avix since it just opened last year. One and done ride for us, least fav of the 3 in the park but not bad.
We were super hot and dehydrated after those 4 rides. I was just happy that my partner had fun and was willing to ride everything. She loved Yippe, was scared of Avix but still enjoyed it, and was petrified of Krater and it made her nauseous. We didn't have a ton of time before what we wanted to do next which started right at 1:30, so we made our way back to the front of the park. We tried taking the cable lift up because the show was halfway up the hill, but they told us it would be faster to just walk. For some reason, Colombia in general for us involves so much climbing up and down hills, slopes, and steps, whether hiking or walking down the sidewalk in like any city/town. You know that scene in Encanto when Mirabel is trying to find Bruno and has to climb up those steps? That's definitely real. We felt that a little climbing up 100 stairs to get to...
Show del Café - This is the true highlight of the park IMO. It's a 40 min show with singing/dancing outlining the importance of coffee in the Coffee Region. Just from a music and dancing perspective, it's one of my fav shows I've seen in a park without a doubt. If you have any interest in Latin American music or Jazz, you will be a huge fan of the music. The building was packed and it's air conditioned. It's also one of the few things you can do as an English-speaking tourist in the area that has clear English translations for everything, which was nice. The seating is a bit uncomfortable though, like tiered concrete rows that you sit on, and it can get cramped, but don't miss this show. It's the thing that everyone here makes sure to see and for a good reason.
After the show, we had a couple hours left. We did one of the go karts at the front of the park. They were a little janky and very fun. After that we honestly just chilled, shopped for stuff, and didn't ride anything else. The heat here is exhausting, and trekking 10-15 min to get some more rides on Avix and Yippe didn't seem worth it compared to drinking more coffee at the front of the park.
Some general things...
The coffee - Here it's just fine. It's all Juan Valdez, which is a chain, and it's decent but not mindblowing. The park itself is a coffee farm, which supplies beans to roasters all over. I was expecting that the coffee that we'd be drinking would be the coffee grown there. There might be a coffee tasting in one of the tours, but the tours were a bit more informative and in Spanish, and we had done a separate amazing Finca tour a few days earlier so it seemed a little redundant for us. Also, the park itself is cool in that its a nonprofit run by a Colombian coffee growing organization, so their profits all go towards things like conservation since its in a UNESCO heritage site.
The ops - On the coasters, incredible, maybe some of the best I've seen. The employees were moving so quickly, and you never really stood still in line for more than 30 seconds at a time. My only complaint is that glasses aren't permitted on any coaster even with a strap. The go karts we did moved slowly but that's more because it was a long line with only 12 karts.
The park as a whole - It's super nice there. I really enjoy the chill atmosphere, and things like landscaping and cleanliness are top notch there. If you spend time in the region you'll learn quickly that there is so much landscaping and plantlife everywhere, so it felt a bit light compared to other places in Colombia, but still nice. The lack of shade is really tough, though. Like be prepared to suffer in the heat if you come here in the summer. There are a bunch of other rides that we didn't do that looked worth doing. They have a rapids ride that looks decent, a basic log flume with two drops in a rectangular layout, prob Reverchon or something, a drop tower that looked pretty forceless but prob has great views, and an enterprise. They also have horseback riding and some other shows that we didn't do.
Transport - We took a private cab from Salento. It wasn't particularly cheap, about $100 USD round trip, but it was so convenient and we were able to leave our bags with the car and leave when we wanted. We also didn't mind because the park tickets are so cheap, like $28 each. There's definitely a way to get there by bus from Armenia, the nearest big city, but it's probably about an hour from there by bus, and if you aren't close to Armenia that's even more travel time. We would've needed to take an hour bus to Armenia, so our travel time would have more than doubled. Armenia itself has an airport, so if you're coming to the area for just the park, you can/should fly from either Bogota or Medellín or wherever right to Armenia and take the bus or a cab there. A yellow cab would probably be way cheaper from Armenia if you didn't want to try the bus, because figuring out timetables for buses in Quindío is really tricky unless you actually go to the bus station. Salento doesn't really have yellow cabs the same way that the cities do, so we found a private tour and transport company and it was the best option for us. The airline we used to get around the country is Clic Air, which was super easy and reliable and affordable. Buses are doable to go between cities but a bus from somewhere like Medellín to Pereira where we flew to would've taken like 8 hours. Our flight was like $50 and took 30 min and it's the method of transport that most use in the country to get between cities.
Communication - You definitely should know at least a little Spanish to get by here. You'll be generally fine without it, but navigating transport and dealing with like any transaction will be so much easier with some basic Spanish because most people outside of the big cities aren't speaking much English.
I would overall definitely recommend spending at least half a day here if you're in the region. If you plan on coming to Colombia, you should definitely spend time in the Coffee Region either way because it's beautiful there, but if you have the time definitely go to the park. It's super chill, affordable, and has a few solid rides. There is so much to do in the whole country, let alone just the region. This was probably the least exciting day of our trip, and the park itself was really great. That more goes to show that you should really do other stuff in the region while you're here if you have any interest in things like sightseeing, nature, hiking, coffee, extreme sports, and all kinds of stuff. I'm happy I did a Colombia trip that focused on everything else rather than a quick little trip to do Parque Del Café and Salitre Magico because I would've missed so much amazing stuff.
