Parque Nacional del Café

Hey everybody! This is part 3 of our trip to Cali. One of the must see places in Colombia is the Zona Cafetera where a large portion of the coffee in the country is grown. We went to an a theme park there called Parque Nacional del Café, or National Coffee Park.

We were welcomed to the park by a big smiley face guy.

Father daughter shot

This is probably the only theme park in the world that you wait in a line like Disney to go ride horses.

All I can say is the wet floor sign wasn't there because they cleaned...

Los Rápidos! Caution: You WILL get wet. You will be dry again in an hour though.

Go-Karts

Of course this place is all about the coffee and the plants were everywhere, so we got a little education on how  the whole process works.

The coffee beans starts out as a flower...

Then they turn into a cherry! They are picked off the tree when they are nice and red.

Inside the coffee cherry are two little beans. These beans are dried out, roasted and sent off  around the world. Did you know that the Colombian coffee is fully traceable from the time it's picked until its delivered? Check it out!

We did one of those dress up photo shoots, but they let us take some pictures on our own too. 

I don't know what Stephany was reading...

...but it definitely wasn't this sign.

It's pretty amazing how naturally this park was integrated into the surroundings. At times it didn't even feel like we were just walking through a jungle.

The Juan Valdez estate here was beautiful!

Could someone please tell me what kind of flower this is? 

While our focus here is on the English preaching work, we take time out once in a while to visit different places around here too. After all, most of the people we talk to are foreigners in this country too, so it always helps to open a conversation about what to do while they are visiting Colombia. We just had our circuit overseer visit this past week and things went very well! We are making a lot of progress in our group and we just had a Bible study qualify to become an unbaptized publisher! It's a rewarding feeling being able to work hard for Jehovah and work towards starting a new congregation. If you have ever considered serving where the need is great, DO IT!