Brad's blog - day one

Colcafe Medellin

Yesterday’s 22 hour journey started in Manchester and ended in Colombia’s fourth largest city, Medellin – home of Colcafe, Colombia’s leading coffee processor. This is where our week-long adventure begins.

Following a meeting to understand the Colcafe business, we are taken into the factory. It is state of the art, and I expect the facilities here in Medellin are a far cry from what we will see later in the week when we meet the farmers whose coffee beans are being processed and packed here.

The management team at Colcafe are clearly very proud of their business reputation for staff well-being and social responsibility. They talk with authority about Fairtrade. A third of the workforce here has over 20 years' service; Colcafe is ranked 1st of over 100 companies in terms of staff morale and engagement. A good company to do business with.

We have a four hour mini-bus journey ahead of us and are reminded that we should not be on the roads after 6pm and that our windows should remain no more than 1cm open, to avoid the threat of grenades being tossed in. For every mention that Colombia does not deserve its bad press for unsafe travel, there is a subtle reminder that there may well be something to worry about while we are here. After all, along with coffee and cocaine, kidnapping of foreigners is one of the country’s most profitable ‘businesses’, and we are headed for the heartland of the underworld in the remote Andes.

Halfway through the journey, the mini-bus turns off the main road onto the narrow mountain road to Aguadas – our home for the week. As the darkness falls, the rains lash down and the going becomes increasingly difficult. (It's not helped by the fact that the driver only has the back of his hand with which to keep clearing the windscreen!) With no signals on the mobile phones, now is not a time you would want to become stranded…

Just 20km from our destination, that’s just what happens. The streams and rivers pouring down the mountainsides and across the road become impassable – a landslide confronts us. We are told to stay in the bus and lock the doors, but after an hour, and with no obvious way out of this, we are told that we need to leave the bus and cross the landslide on foot to be collected by car on the other side. While the others roll up trousers, I change into a pair of red shorts. A good idea at the time.

In the pitch dark, with just a few torches to guide us, we head towards the awaiting mud, leaving our luggage and the relative safety of the bus. It’s tempting to stay on what appears to be higher ground to the side of the road, but warning calls to move coincide with the unmistakable sound of that same ground giving way and plummeting down the mountainside. We don’t need telling twice and quickly move into the mud – it rises to knee height and we are told to grab a rope that is strung out in front of us by emergency services. As we wade through the mud, the land continues to fall away behind us, just a couple of feet from the edge of the road. We can’t move quickly enough but the mud sucks our feet back in at every step. Well we were told it was going to be an adventure!

Eventually, after what seems like a lifetime, we are safely across. As we wait for our car, the warnings of kidnappings and grenade attacks on the bus are now a secondary thought, as the realisation of just what we have been through sinks in. At Aguadas, we head straight for a café bar and a local man sees the opportunity to earn a few pesos by taking our boots and socks and washing them for us. As we discuss tomorrow’s itinerary, I wonder how my presentation and board meeting will go – mud spattered shorts and soaking wet boots aren't the most suitable attire, but this is all I have 'til our luggage catches us up.

It's certainly been an interesting start to the trip.

Day two