This week's dream: Southern Colombia

Parts of southern Colombia are like "a vision of earthly paradise", says Adrian Mourby in The Independent on Sunday – so beautiful and peaceful, it’s hard to believe that until just a few years ago they were terrorised by drug gangs and rebel guerrillas, and out of bounds to tourists. But government forces under President Alvaro Uribe have driven out the gunmen, and this year the British Foreign Office advised that travel to this part of Colombia is now safe. A resurgent tourist industry is already taking root, with visitors drawn by the region's pristine mountain and jungle landscapes, and pretty colonial towns.

In the "Coffee Triangle" – the country's principle coffee-farming region – the landscape is as green as green gets; the skies are pure blue; and everything is speckled with the "impossible reds" of tropical birds and flowers. Of its many "steep, deep" Andean valleys, none is lovelier than the Valle de Cocora, near the town of Salento. It is home to the palma de cera, an extraordinarily tall palm that reaches heights of 60m, and is Colombia’s national tree. Rearing up on top of misty green hills, it looks "like something out of Jurassic Park". Visitors can stay at a local coffee farm, Galicia, which nestles among the luxuriant foliage of "bamboo, heliconia, strelitzia and fruit trees", and sample its produce, freshly roasted, at breakfast time. It’s a treat that takes half an hour to prepare but will leave coffee lovers "in raptures".

Scattered across the region are "brightly painted" 19th century towns with European names like Sevilla, Genova and Filandia (a spelling mistake when its founders went to register it), each centred on a splendid square with a statue of Simón Bolívar and a big church. Do not miss the "exquisite" Popayán, considered to be Colombia’s second-most beautiful city after Cartagena de Indias, “a masterpiece of whitewashed Spanish colonial architecture”.
Travel the Unknown (0845-053 0352; traveltheunknown.com) has a 14-day tour of southern Colombia from £2,800pp incl. flights. ·