The last trip that I took before we were quarantined thanks to COVID-19 was to Colombia’s coffee region, the Eje Cafetero. This beautiful Andean region belongs to the departments of Risaralda, Quindio and Caldas and is filled with colourful villages hidden within the Andes mountains. In this region, it seems as if the touristic activities you can do have no end. You can go to the Ruiz’s hot springs high up in the Andes mountains where you will meet with an astonishing paramo ecosystem and feed hummingbirds. Right next to the hot springs you can go to the National Natural Park Los Nevados where you can go to the imposing Nevado del Ruiz. You can take advantage of your time there and visit all the beautiful villages and enjoy the magical roads that take you through the Andes mountains. You could go to the Coffee Park where I remember seeing a play about the famous Juan Valdez or you can visit some of the coffee plantations around the Eje Cafetero.
These coffee plantations have been suffering for many years. Coffee only grows in a specific climate that can only be found in certain tropical regions like Colombia’s Eje Cafetero. Thanks to global warming’s rising temperatures many farmers have lost part of their productive soil and have been forced to move up the hill their crops. Moreover, the coffee crisis which saw coffee prices plummet to the ground has made it impossible for farmers to adapt easily to global warming. This has reduced the amount of coffee farmers can produce and has forced many of them to support their economic activities with tourism.
After the coffee crisis the three departments that used to rely only on coffee, sought ways to diversify their economy beyond coffee. Risaralda started investing in the industrial sector, Caldas started to invest in education to become an education hub in Colombia and Quindio, the most reliant on coffee invested in tourism. The three departments were benefited from the industry sector, the creation of infrastructures like the coffee highway and the recently inaugurated La Línea road pass allows the industry easier transport but also promotes tourism in the three departments. Tourism not only brought economic benefits, thanks to it reforestation campaigns like "a toll for a tree" appeared throughout the region and ecological education through tourism has been made.
Because of COVID-19 95 per cent of all the tourism infrastructure was forced to close in the Eje Cafetero. This has caused huge economic losses to the tourism industry and has again put in risk the farms that rely on tourism for an extra income that used to be around 10 in the 1990's but today are more tan 350 farms. The growth of tourism in Colombia's coffee region, prompted the growth of the hotel sector that is one of the most affected because of the pandemic and is now looking for a way to operate again. Nontheless, projections for international tourism in 2020 are low and the United Nations World Tourism Organization is betting on internal tourism to aid the recovery of the tourism sector.
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