Food Tours · Tour

A Coffee Steam Bath at 2200 Metres in Parque Arvi

This one is a coffee tour that turns into a spa, and the spa is not an add-on: the therapies use the parts of the coffee fruit the industry throws away. It starts at Parque Arvi, the 16,000-hectare reserve in the Santa Elena corregimiento, reached by the Arvi cable car, which is 4.6 kilometres of gondola over the forest and is worth the trip on its own. From there, a motorcycle-chiva along the old arrieria path, the ancestral muleteer route through the reserve, to the Don Leandro farm at 2,200 metres. Altitude that high is where the more interesting Colombian coffees come from, and the tour goes through the growing and the ancestral processing methods, then the preparation laboratory in a cave. You plant a coffee tree. Then the spa. An ancestral coffee steam ritual. A Naox bath, which is water therapy in a mineral spring infused with mucilage and coffee pulp, the sticky fruit layer that comes off during processing. And coffee flower tea to rehydrate. Three hours, six people at most, in English or Spanish, with the minivan on the arrieria route, the coffee experience, the steam ritual, the mineral bath and the coffee spa. Lunch is not included. Not recommended if you have a spinal injury.