Advantages? It's free, and staying with locals lets you avoid the gringo trail-type activities (hostel-hosted barbeques, Irish pubs) that are easy to fall into if you only ever meet other travelers. It's also great Spanish practice.
Disadvantages? Most people don't live right downtown, so there's always some neighborhood navigation to be done--not to mention the awkward moment when you knock on someone's door (having communicated with them only through email) with all your stuff, ready to jump in their shower and crash on their couch for a few days.
Couchsurfing requires a lot of flexibility, but luckily, in a generally outgoing and friendly continent, a stranger in the house isn't a big deal for most people. Most people will bend over backwards to help you if you show some interest in their culture. I found this to be especially true in Colombia--most people want to show you that their country's dangerous reputation is entirely undeserved (and it is. I met the most wonderful people there, and never once felt unsafe).
My confidence bolstered by the fact that there is no word for 'awkward' in Spanish, I rang the doorbell of my first hosts, a guy named Juan Carlos and his mother Alicia. I saw on their profile that they'd hosted a whole bunch of people, and Alicia told me that they'd had 86 people come through--an impressive count.
Armenia itself is a chaotic and crowded yet dull bunch of shops full of things you'd never really want to buy, but it's set in the middle of the Eje Cafetero (the coffee-growing region), which is lovely and has many things to do. There are plantations to visit and picturesque, colorfully painted small towns to explore, surrounded by striking hillsides full of wax palms (Colombia's national tree).
My first outing was to a coffee plantation called Recuca, where I planned to stroll through the coffee fields and gain a better understanding of my only addiction! Alicia had highly recommended it, so my first morning in Armenia I headed down to the terminal to find a bus to Barcelona, the town closest to Recuca. I asked the driver if he'd let me off in Barcelona. He agreed but ultimately ended up taking me too far. Oops. He let me off in the next town and I waited on the other side of the road, killing time by chatting with a couple of policemen and trying not to stare too hard at their enormous rifles. After a couple of minutes I found my way back to Recuca, or should I say the gate to the road leading there. Tourist things in Colombia still require a certain amount of figuring out (meaning that there aren't a bunch of signs indicating where you need to go, or shuttles equipped with multilingual guides to take you there). I walked for about half an hour down that road, past farm after farm full of plantain trees and coffee fields.
Just as I figured I must have been misinformed or missed a turnoff somewhere, I came across the entrance and jumped into a little tour group that had just started. They walked us through the whole process--growing, picking, shelling, drying, roasting, etc. There were tons of goofy photo ops as well. Along with a French guy in the group, I was the only one game to put on the silly costumes and pretend to be picking coffeebeans.
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