Visitors refer to the 60m tall wax palms in the Cocora Valley as "Dr. Seuss trees" due to their attenuated trunks and shock of tousled fronds that call forth from the pages of The Lorax. Those cartoonish proportions are so oddly out of place among the familiar forms of the surrounding pastures that they appear as alien invaders in a foreign land. On the mossy slopes above troops of them disappear into the passing mist as if charging the smokey ramparts of some unseen redoubt. A five-hour hike follows a trail that cuts through cloud forests with raging rivers and wobbly suspension bridges, and then down to the valley floor where the wax palms stand tall and erect like soldiers at attention. Along the way, mustangs and cattle form ghostly figures in the fog. And everywhere everything is green, and everything is wet.
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