Villa Del Leyva

Day 1 – Zorro Town!

Being woken up very early again with our 7am coffee and juice we had quick showers and then packed as we were on our way again.  We were going to a town that was recommended to us as very pretty and a must see.

We went to a nearby café to get some breakfast then went back to our hostel where we had booked a taxi for 9am.  The taxi took us back to the bus station where we picked up our tickets for the bus to Tunja.

It was about a 3 ½ hour bus ride through the mountains before we arrived at Tunja, here we had to pick up a mini-bus to take us the rest of the way.  After a bit of confusion at the bus station as there were several companies you could go with, one guy was pretty anxious to get us on his mini-bus so we agreed to go with him.

The mini-bus ride was around ¾ hour, or would have been if it hadn’t of kept stopping to pick up more passengers and hawkers to sell food.  But finally, we arrived around 3pm and set off in search of the hostel we had booked.

Our first impressions of the town were really good, very much like Barichara with white-washed buildings and tiled roof.  Although after dragging our wheeled luggage down quite a few very cobbled streets our opinions had altered slightly.

We found our hostel down a quiet side road and checked in, the hostel was quite nice as the rooms were all located around a central courtyard.  Our room was clean but on the smallish side with no cupboards to store our clothes, we quickly unpacked as best we could and headed out.

First, we wandered around the cobbled streets admiring how pretty the town was before entering the main square.  The main square was completely cobbled with a small fountain at the centre, in fact this square was massive, apparently, the largest square in Columbia.  The town had recently been used for the setting of a South American TV series of Zorro, so I’ll have to don a black mask if we plan to do some horse riding here.

After taking some photos of the square, the church and the buildings surrounding the square we headed to a nearby restaurant bar where we had some afternoon ’welcome’ beers whilst watching people walk through the square.  It was all very relaxing until we asked for the bill and to my astonishment the drinks were double the price of anywhere else in Columbia

Expressing my unhappiness at this to the waitress we then left and went in search of a restaurant that looked good on trip advisor. After getting my directions wrong and heading in the opposite direction we eventually found it only to find that it was shut.

As it was still early to eat we decided to find a cheaper bar and try and find Shell’s elusive cigarette filters.  We found a cheaper bar to have a drink but there was still no luck on the filter front.

It was now early evening so we decided to go back to the restaurant to get dinner, but it was still shut.  However, we had noticed a parilla next door so we thought we would give that a try.  We had a very nice waiter who was very attentive and explained what the different meats were.  As it had been a while and we thought we deserved a treat we both went for a steak. 

The only problem being when I tried to ask the waiter for a rare steak I was convinced in Spanish it was ‘Hencho’ but he looked very confused/surprised no matter how I tried to pronounce it, I gave up.  But I was convinced I had the right word, however when Shell put it into her phone translator it came up as ‘Fuck’.  So basically I had been asking for a steak fuck, no wonder the poor lad was looking confused, cue 10 minutes of laughter from Shell!! (Still convinced in Spanish Spain its Hencho).

Once Shell had finished crying with laughter our food turned up and our steaks were not exactly fuck, they were pretty medium to well done.  But there were a couple of sauces with them, chimicurro and chile which helped them go down and in fact the steaks were OK.

We decided to have an early night and headed back across the square, just as we were exiting I caught the sound of some rock music coming out of the corner bar so we thought we would check it out.  The bar was very cosy, had reasonable priced beer and was playing music so we thought we would have a drink in there.

After one beer though the music was switch off and the TV put on to show a recent Columbia v Brazil under 19s football match from the night before.  As much as I like football I had caught most of this the night before in San Gil so we finished our drinks and headed home for an early night after all.

Day 2 – More Booking Frustration

We got up slightly later than normal and headed to the courtyard for breakfast.  After waiting for 15 minutes and no one paying attention to us we realised we had missed the breakfast cut off point.  We did manage to get them to wrestle up a couple of coffees for us though.

As we were a bit peckish we headed out and found a nearby café where we got some more coffee’s and a couple of pretty bland pastries.  Whilst we consumed these we formulated our plan of action for the next few days and as we had miscalculated a day we decided we would head off the next day to Bogota (as we would have had to spend another day it the town if we had wanted to go to the Saturday market).

With this in mind,  we then headed off to find a tourist office so we could book some outings for today, hopefully some horse riding. First, we tried the official tourist office, which was tiny and did not have a great deal of information, so they pointed us in the direction of a tourist agency.

 

At the first agency, we found that the cost for horse riding was quite expensive at about £17 hour each so we headed towards the bus station where I thought I had seen more agencies on the way in.  We tried another two agencies where again the horse riding was expensive, so we spoke to them about an afternoon sight seeing tour by car.  Again, we found this was overly expensive at about £50 not including entrance fees (I guess this town is just a tourist trap).

So we resigned ourselves to just to have a lazy afternoon and appreciate the beauty of the town. Before we headed back to the square we went to the bus station and picked up tickets for a mini-bus to Bogota for the next day.

It was now midday so we went back to the main square and decided to do what the locals do, buy a cheap beer from the shop and drink it sat on a bench.  We had picked up a stray dog on the way through to the square and it decided to curl up at our feet, which was soon joined by a couple more, in the hope of getting some food off the gringo’s.  Feeling relaxed and watching the locals walk by, we stayed there for an hour or so drinking a couple of cheap beers before returning to the hostel.

 

Back at the hostel we moved a bench from outside our room to a nearby settee and spent the rest of the afternoon blogging and doing some research on what we were up to the next few days.

Once the sun had gone down we headed once again to the square and to the rock bar from the previous night.  The music was quite eclectic but enjoyable so we spent the rest of the night there until our bellies started rumbling.

On our way back to the hostel, most of the restaurants seem to have shut for the night, but as luck would have it there was a burger joint right on the corner of the street that was still open.  Ordering a couple of dirty burgers I once again had a bit of communication problem as I couldn't work out if the burgers came with chips, which resulted in burger and chips with a side of chips each.  The burgers were a bit sloppy and we had too many chips, but it did help soak up the evenings excess’s.

After our grease-fest we then continued back to the hostel to put our heads down for the night, its back to a big bad city tomorrow.

 

 

San Gil (200th Special Edition Blog)

Day 1 – No Booking!

Well amazingly welcome to our 200^th blog, we can’t quite believe that we have managed to keep this up!  At a rough guess the blogs are on average 2,500 words each which means we have written over ½ million words, mostly made up of the following words: after, however, before, beer and unfortunately/fortunately!  According to google, an average book is about 200,000 words, so we have written 2 ½ books!!  If you are still reading thanks and well done

 back to blog No. 200:

It was just going to be one of those days! after very limited sleep we arrived at the San Gil bus terminal around 10am where the temperature was already kicking in nicely. It was 3-4k outside of town and we didn’t fancy the hike, so after stopping for a well needed coffee, we grabbed a taxi.

Arriving at the hostel, which to be honest was run more like a hotel, the lovely lady immediately showed us to our room (even though we were around 3hrs early). A good start we thought.

Agreeing that Glenn’s shorts were falling apart so we needed to purchase a new needle and thread, we desperately needed a laundry and we needed to book some activities for the following day, our plan for the day was laid out.

 

We headed for the plaza and soon managed to tick off the first 3 points. We then headed off to find a tourist agency as we had heard that the thing to do in San Gil was rafting and canyoning. Easy you would think? We trawled the very hot streets, headed towards the river, back to the plaza and couldn’t find one agency! When we did finally find one, we couldn’t grasp what the trips involved as they only spoke Spanish… given the pictures showed climbing down rocks, crawling through tunnels and jumping off very high things, we thought we had better not rely on our poor translation skills and find a more suitable agency.

A bit more trawling around and getting a bit ratty, we finally decided to seek some shade, have our ‘welcome to San Gil’ beer, some food and find an internet to do some research online. We did, we found an agency which was (would you believe) directly behind our hostel!

We finished our food and headed back towards our hostel and the tourist agency. On our way, we took a picture of a really steep street and patted ourselves on our backs that we had chosen a hostel  at a more reasonable altitude. We turned the next corner, was greeted by an equally steep street and our google map informed us that in order to get to the agency we would have to climb it. It was very hot, we had had little sleep, you get the picture!

 

After climbing up, hot, sweaty and tired, google decided to inform us it was in fact the wrong street and it couldn’t be arsed to reset the map and tell us where we should be! Feeling pretty fed-up, we retired to the hostel to cool down.

Determined not to give up, and knowing we were only going to be in San Gil a couple of days, we re-checked the map back at the hostel and after a brief cool down, set off again.

Another bloody steep mountainlike hill! we climbed, it wasn’t there, we gave up!. I don’t actually think any words were exchanged between us, completely deflated, we limped back to the hostel, resigned and in much need of a nap.

We headed out again in the cool of the evening and found a bar banging out Shakira tunes and I convinced Glenn to go in….well we were in Colombia. We had a couple there and headed to a bar called ‘Doggie Style’ which wasn’t as interesting as it sounds so headed home soon after.

Day 2 – Barichara – straight out of a filmset

Our hostel didn’t include b/f so you can imagine my pleasant surprise when there was a knock at the door and I was greeted with a tray of Coffee, fresh juice and Crackers. Unfortunately, the surprise wasn’t so pleasant for Glenn as it was 7AM and disturbed his beauty sleep!

Given the tourist agency fiasco yesterday, our plan for today was to head to a nearby town called Barichara which is a 300+yr old town resplendent with cobblestone streets, white washed walls and red tiled roofs. It’s now a national monument and where a lot of Spanish speaking films are made.

It’s 20k outside of San Gil so we headed to the local bus station and was soon on our way for the 45min journey over the mountain.

 

We arrived in a beautiful plaza in the very picturesque town around 10am, spotted a church up a hill and headed for that. Another church, a few more cobbled streets later and we had pretty much covered everything, but it was only 11am!. We wanted to at least have lunch there before heading back so we stopped for a coffee to kill a bit of time and found directions to a cemetery that was supposed to be nice?

 

It was!, I don’t think ‘ ever been in one quite so pretty, all of the headstones were unique and a lot included mouldings that were special to the bereaved i.e. a sombrero, a football, a bottle of their favourite tipple…. To add to the atmosphere, there was an old boy attending the cemetery who was sat in the shade drinking and banging out salsa tunes from his portable radio… we think the dead would have appreciated it.

 

We must have spent nearly an hour wandering around, when we left, the church had just finished its Monday morning service (very religious here) and there were a few old boys standing outside the corner shop for a few beers so we joined them for a ‘welcome to Barichara beer’ before heading off to find some lunch.

 

We found a place that looked suitably run down, full of locals and had goat on the menu (local speciality).  We sat outside where a huge woman was attending the Parrilla, ordered the set menu and hoped for the best. What turned up was a Quinoa soup with a goat joint in It (mainly bone), followed by some cut of lamb (mainly fat). Not the best but it was cheap and authentic. We then headed to the bus to take us back to San Gil.

 

Glenn had read about a hostel that organised trips and spoke English so we headed directly there when we arrived. As we now had only one day left, we opted to do the Canyoning in the morning and rafting in the afternoon (hope I don’t regret this). We then had a beer to congratulate ourselves on a job well done before heading back to the hostel to chill.

In the evening, we managed to find a nice little corner bar which I will now re-name our local. It was more a shop than a bar, had about 5 tables but it was full of locals, looked right out onto the plaza and was cheap! We had a few there before heading to doggy style who’s music wasn’t great and was home again around 10.

Day 3 – I did regret it! Canyoning and Rafting and bruises and aches

It was going to be a pretty full on day so after finishing our now expected coffee and juice, we headed to the hostel where we had booked our trip. As we were a little early, we stopped off in our local for a coffee first.

There were to be four of us and the guide for our Canyoning adventure, two nimble, fit 20 somethings and me and Glenn! Canyoning, in case you don’t know, involves scrambling through narrow caves, jumping off high rocks into water and abseiling down cliffs. I was feeling okayish about this, after all, we had already done some pretty adventurous stuff before. However, when the guide took one look at me, probably spotted I had said goodbye to my 20’s and 30’s some time ago, and asked if I had ever done anything like this before… when what he really meant was can you manage this?  I did start having 2^nd thoughts!

 

Those were to be practically the only words he mumbled throughout the entire trip! My nervousness quickly turned into hardy resolve, I’d show this little shit that my 46 year old body who had been solidy drinking and smoking for the last 15 months would not only keep up, but would smash the course! (but hopefully not my bones)

To Glenn’s relief (who doesn’t like small spaces) we had to forego the caves due to lack of rain, and after clambering down to the river bed, started to make our way over rocks and boulders above the route the cave would have took us.

 

It was hot so we were all releived when we soon reached a spot where we were told to jump into the water. It was only around  6bfeet so pretty easy and the water was refreshing. What wasn’t easy was that the route was getting harder and harder, now wet, we started to slip and slide across the boulders. It’s here I should point out that the guide asked us not to report back that this part of the route wasn’t in the plan and he would get into trouble so to please keep quiet (one of the only other illuminating pieces of info he had to offer). The drops got sheerer, we had to make our way back and re-route several times and it became progressively difficult. At one point we were asked to leap from one boulder to another with a huge gap and a long way down, I declined and opted for a rather long re-route instead. For someone who has a tendency to fall off pavements and trip over matchsticks it wasn’t good!. After crawling under an overhang of rock where we were told not to touch the stone as it would fall and crush us, we finally made it to the route proper (I was inwardly sobbing by this point!)

 

Here was the next jump into the deep. However, the guide said that he wasn’t exactly sure how deep it was due to the lack of rain and understood if we didn’t want to jump. He ‘hoped’ it was around 6ft deep. Both Glenn and I declined, wanting to be in good health for the rest of our trip, but the two 20 somethings said they would give it a go. We made our way down to the bottom you can see us looking smug in the pic below) and waited whilst the 20 somethings finally and safely jumped after a lot of coaxing. (1-0 to the 20 somethings)

More clambering and we were at our first abseil point. Glenn volunteered first (he wanted to show the youngsters that we still had it). He was given very limited instruction and then he was off over the edge. I couldn’t look at first, but when I did I saw him making his way down the 30 metre drop, clear the cliff face and then just sort of hang there and release the rope until he safely made it to the ground.

 

I was next, and with the benefit of watching Glenn’s decent, I was (if I say so myself) pretty smooth, making it down in record time, smoothly and no hitches. I think I saw a tiny look of admiration on the guides face.

 

It took the 20 somethings quite a bit of time as they were both nervous and the boy kept getting stuck. That evens the score out to 1-1

More clambering and then onto the next jump point. This was around 25 feet and you had to take a running jump so that you didn’t crash into the overhang.  Nobody really wanted to be first! We were in the middle of a debate when I just resigned and said I would go first, where Glenn (my hero) said he didn’t want me to do that and the next thing he was running towards the edge and hurtling over the other side.  He landed safely, phew!

My turn next, after a couple of false starts I was sailing through the air, I must say it felt like a lot longer drop than I had expected. After retrieving my helmet which had came off in the impact (nice) I made my way over to Glenn where we waited for around 10 mins for the 20 somethings to be coaxed into jumping (2-1 to us!)

We had one final and smaller abseil and lots more clambering (the pics really don’t do it justice) till we arrived at the end, battered, bruised and lots of new grazes but we made it! Thank you Glenn for helping and ensuring I didn’t kill myself.

 

We were returned to San Gill and had an hour to kill before the rafting started. Deciding we had earnt a beer we headed to the local bar before returning back and being led to the rafting agency.

It seems that if we had walked one block further on the first day, we would have found all of the agencies, there were bloody tonnes!

We boarded a mini bus for a 20min journey and was soon at the river bed and being introduced to our Colombian rafting companions. The raft looked pretty basic and we had heard the river was tame with a grade 2, 3 if you were lucky so Glenn opted not to go for the pics.

This was a shame, as the rafting wasn’t particulary scary, the guide made a bit point of capturing people jumping off the raft, being taken by the current, balancing on the front  etc. and we could have got some good shots. As it was, Glenn and I just stayed on dry (apart from one time when the guide pushed Glenn in)

Out of all the time we had been in San Gil, today, the clouds decided to make an appearance so we were glad when the 2hrs was up and we could head onto dry land as we were freezing cold. The team we were with were fun, and we were glad we did it but it wasn’t a patch on our Chile adventure.

We headed back to the hostel for warmish showers and then straight out for food as we were ravenous. Gringo Mikes was our destination, not very Colombian I know but we’d heard they did the best burgers (they did) and we didn’t want to risk having crap food!

 

A few beers in our local and then in a couple of other bars, we headed home as we were both knackered. I bet we will ache in the morning!

Taganga - Part II

Day 1 – Cashpoint says No!

We got up showered and packed before grabbing some breakfast at the hostel.   Once fed we headed down the dusty lane and waited for a public bus to come along.  It wasn’t long before one turned up and we boarded and waited for it to set off and take us back to Santa Marta.

 

The bus ride was a hot and sweaty 3 hour ride and getting off at Santa Marta we wandered around for a bit before hailing down a cab for the short drive to Taganga.

Back at Taganga we headed back to our old hostel and checked back in, unfortunately it appeared we had been downgraded and we were in a pokey and roasting hot little room with a tiny corridor for a bathroom.

 

Once again unpacked and now early afternoon we headed to the communal area to do a bit of travel research, get some cooler air and book a flight.  We had intended on going snorkelling but the flight website was screwing around and it pretty much took all afternoon to sort out the flights we wanted.

It was not turning out to be a very good day as when we finally ventured out and went to get some cash from the town’s only cashpoint, it wasn’t playing ball.  As we had all the next day in Taganga with very little money we decided we would have to go back to Santa Marta to get some cash.  An Australian guy named Michael was also in the same predicament so he agreed to share a cab with us.

The taxi ride once again was quick and we both managed to get the cash out that we needed.  Whilst we were there we walked around the shops to find some elusive filters that Shell was after, we eventually found some (very expensive, a packet of ciggies is cheaper) and then caught a cab back to Taganga.

After such a rubbish day we headed to find a bar near the beach and Michael joined us.  So the rest of the night was spent drinking and chatting about our travels.  Michael amazingly had recently been to the no-go country of Venezuela and had some interesting stories about it.

 

We said our goodbyes to Michael but weren’t quite ready to go to bed so we picked up some beers at a nearby shop and took them back to the hostel.  We stayed up fairly late for us, reading some more serial killer stories to each other whilst we drank our beers.

Day 2 – Lazy Day

Surprisingly after quite a late night we were up at a decent hour and went and made some breakfast, pancakes and fried eggs!, strangely it worked, and was much better than the over sweetened bread you get here. As we were not due to catch out night bus until 10pm we made the decision to extend our room for the day so we didn’t have to pack and could take showers later in the day.

It was very hot today so we just loitered around the hostel for a big part of the day, once again catching up on some blogging and doing some travel research.

Later in the afternoon when it started cooling down we headed for the beach where we were going to catch up on the dip and snorkelling that we missed the previous day.  Donning our masks and snorkels we headed into the water and headed towards the rocks on the left hand of the bay.  However, what struck us that this beautiful bay wasn’t as clean as we thought, snorkelling towards the rocks was very murky and the sea bed was littered with beer bottles/cans and other types of rubbish.

When we reached the rocky area the situation had not improved as we had hoped.  We snorkelled around there for a bit but it was still dirty looking and the fish that we could see were not that pretty or interesting. 

Feeling a bit deflated by this we decided to head back to shore, dry off for a bit and then get a beer from our local beach bar.  We only had the one as we had to sort ourselves out for the upcoming night bus.

 

We headed back to the hostel where we took showers and packed our bags before going out to get something to eat.  As we wanted a good meal we headed to the restaurant we had been to before which was pretty decent, this time we both went for the chicken & beef skewers (I ordered two as I was feeling pretty peckish).    

Whilst we were sat there we were once more impressed how the South American’s look after their stray dogs, a guy coming out with dry dog food and feeding them all on the street.  Also, there was suddenly some lively band music coming down the street, which as it approached turned out to be a very mini-carnival.  However, we like to believe it was put on for us as we were leaving town.

 

Once we had our fill we then collected our bags from the hostel and headed to the main road where we quickly hailed down a taxi to take us to the bus station in Santa Marta. 

Arriving at the bus station we picked up our tickets, found the bus and boarded.  Columbian buses are not as good as some we have travelled in and this bus only had semi-cama (reclines a bit) so we were going to be in for a long night.

Palomino

Day 1 – Change of Plan - Palomino

After a night of being kept awake with loud snoring (not Glenn for a change), loud conversation from our neighbours, overpriced food, a hot sticky tent, mosquito’s and packed beaches, we decided it was time to say goodbye to Tayrona. A shame, as we later discovered that had we not cocked up with yesterday’s lunch que, we would have had time to hike further to find some pretty remote beaches.

Anyhow, we woke up to camp noises around 6:30am but had to wait for the café to open at 8am for our caffeine boost before our trek back.

 

 

Probably because it was later in the morning, the trek back seemed a bit tougher, with more ups than downs making us hot and sticky. As we walked, we passed hordes of people heading into the camps so we were happy to be leaving.

Today’s plan was to head to Palomino, which the travel agent in Taganga had recommended. Palomino is a small backpacker beach town where you can tube down the river and more importantly, had beds with walls to keep the mozzies out and the noise down!

We had heard there were buses outside the national park that could take you and after catching the minivan back to the park entrance, we were greeted by a very friendly Colombian who directed us to the waiting bus and we were quickly on our way for the 45 min journey.

We arrived in a small dusty town around lunchtime and headed to a nearby café to get our orientation and our ‘welcome to Palomino’ beer. We liked the place, quite backpackery, with some indigenous people still in residence and the beer was cheap!

 

As we had arrived a day earlier than expected, we didn’t have accommodation for the night. We only had our light day packs on us so decided to head down towards the beach to see what we could find. The beach was quite a distance from the main road so we made it about half way, with occasional stops at hostels to enquire about prices, before we decided we needed to eat.

 

We found a nice hostel with an open restaurant which was made of thatch. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t so great, Glenn ended up with a tiny curried crepe type thing (that had just looked at the curry packet!) and I had fish which was undercooked (I hadn’t ordered sushi!).

 

We then headed to the main beach and discovered that like most of Colombia’s Caribbean Coast, the waves, whilst swimmable, were pretty rough. We wandered along the beach, stopped by at a couple of places to enquire about rooms before deciding to head back to get a room where we ate. Whilst the food was crap, it was about the best price/accommodation we had seen.

 

We were shown to our room which whilst it was really nice, it was adjacent to another hostel banging out techno music. Pointing this out I was told that it would stop around 11pm. The roof was also made from thatch so had a massive gap in the eve’s which let in mozzie’s. So much for the upgrade from our tent. Oh well , we were both knackered so slide under our mozzie net for a much needed doze, toe tapping to the techno sounds

 

After waking and showering, we headed to a couple of bars by the beach, it was pretty quiet and we were still a bit groggy from our nap so headed back to our hostel for a beer before turning in for the night. ….No idea what time the techno stopped but it was way past 11!.

Day 2 - Bike Ride Hell, Tubing and meeting old (new) friends

We decided to risk b/f at our hostel as we couldn’t be arsed to walk further. It was okay, with the usual eggs (one is always broken) and over sweet bread but the coffee was good (as you would expect in Colombia).

We had heard that our friend, David, was in town (who we had met back in Myanmar) so our plan was to do tubing in the morning, and meet up with him for lunch.

I’d done some research and heard it was better to book with one of the companies by the beach so you didn’t have to schlep your tube back up to the main high street.

As luck would have it, there was one directly opposite our hostel which agreed on the price we were willing to pay.

Before I knew it, I was on the back of a bike, handed a rubber ring and clutching my newly purchased bottle of ice cold (and therefore very slippery) water and hurtling along the dusty and bumpy road.

At this point, I had no idea whether Glenn was behind me or not, I couldn’t turn around because of the rubber ring I was holding and was concentrating all my efforts on holding on to everything.

We reached the end of the dusty road and hit proper tarmac, relief!. Not for long, my driver took a turning and we were heading along and up and down very VERY  steep and bumpy and dusty roads which dirt bikes would have trouble with. At this point something had to give, and luckily it was my bottle of water.

We stopped to retrieve it which was where I saw Glenn behind me, we exchanged a ‘what the hell are we doing, Im crapping myself’ looks before we continued the rest of the journey.
 

The rest of the journey turned out to be worse!  It got steeper and bumpier so I decided to close my eyes until I felt the bike stop and we were deposited at the start of our hike to the river.

 

After the bikes had gone, we sat down to let our heartrates calm down a bit before making the climb. The climb took about an hour, of hot and sweaty walking with Glenn in the lead and me effing and jeffing behind him, carrying my rubber ring.

We then finally made it down to the river, secured our dry bag headed in for a nice dip before jumping on our rings and being taken by the current towards the sea.

 

It was beautiful, lots of stunning jungle scenery, king fishers and fishermen to keep us amused, however the current did manage to take us into the banks a few times where we had to wrestle ourselves out of the trees. A lot of people take beers with them to sip along the route or to stop off at one of the nearby banks but as we were meeting David (and it was a little too early for beer, even for us!) we just let the current take us along.

 

After about 2hrs, we came close to where the river met the sea, the water became quite shallow in parts which meant trying to drag yourself along by your hands and feet, or stand up and shuffle over to a deeper bit, neither of which looked very glamorous!

 

Back on dry land, we had quite a hike across the beach to where we were to drop off our rings, we then picked up our bags from the hostel and headed to a bar where we had agreed to meet our friend.

We met and spent the afternoon and early evening with David, catching up on each others adventures. Unfortunately David and Katherine had gone their separate ways whilst travelling, and Katherine was now back in blighty, so we had a drink for her too.

 

David was catching a night bus to Santa Marta so we said our final goodbyes with promises to meet up in London, before we headed to our hostel to check in.

 

It was around 8pm and the route took us down a very dark and dusty road but we were rewarded with a warm welcome from the hostel owner and a very VERY nice room. We did our usual opening and closing drawers, checking the power and temperature of water, bouncing on the bed to see how comfy it was and locking up our valuables before heading out again.

 

We made it to a bar at the end of the road, where we had a couple more beers, a chat with some lads we had met back in Tayrona, before heading back along the dark road to our lovely, quiet, mosquito free room.

Tayrona National Park

Day 1 – Camping!

Up with the larks again as we were being picked up by mini-bus at 6.15.  We just had time to pack some stuff in our small day back-packs, store our main bags with the hostel and grab a quick coffee before going to our meeting point.

We set off promptly and the driver seemed like quite a jolly chap, chatting to a couple of Israelis that were on board, from what we could make out, about their sexual conquests in Columbia.  However I would have been more happy if he had kept his eyes on the road whilst doing so.  The actual journey wasn’t that long at just over an hour and the scenery and little towns along the way were quite nice.

At 7.30 we arrived at the park entrance and as we had paid our entrance fee in advance we quickly passed through the gates and were given wristbands to wear.  At the other side of the gate there was a mini-bus waiting to take us the remaining leg of the journey to the beginning of the walk at Canaveral.  Once the mini-bus had enough passengers in we had a short 10 minute drive before we were dropped off.

 

 

The Tayrona park was established in 1964 to protect 27 species of fauna and flora that are only found in this region, as well as 56 endangered species such as armadilo’s, primates, turtles and tiger cats.  It was declared as a protected area by UNESCO.  Fortunately for us it was due to close for a month at the end of January (for repairs), so we were lucky to be there just before it did.

 

 

We quickly found the Kogi Trail which was going to be an hours hike to Arrecifes where all the accommodation was to be found.  The trail was quite straight forward being a path and boardwalks with thick jungle surrounding it.

 

 

After around 15 minutes of walking, we stopped as we heard rustling in the trees overhead and when we looked there were monkeys looking for food in the canopy.  I did my best to try and get photo’s but they were quite high up and moving quickly.

 

Heading onwards and upwards we still continued along the jungle path until we reached a viewpoint where we could finally see our first glimpse of the Caribbean ocean and beach, it looked absolutely stunning.

 

We then walked down towards the beach and soon were walking across it, although this first beach was stunning the waves and currents were very strong and there were warning boards informing no swimming as over 100 people had drowned here.

 

So a few photo’s later we walked on and re-entered a jungle area and walked for another 15 minutes before we reached the Arrecifes park entrance.  Before you could enter though we were subject to a bag search and frisk down by the security, ensuring no hard liquor or drugs were brought into the camp.

 

 

We spoke to the first camp reception and enquired about renting a cabin or tent for the night and I couldn’t believe it when I was told over 800,000 pesos a night.  I had to get the lady to write it down to check whether I had heard correctly, but yes I had they wanted about £200 a night!!

Luckily there were other options and we found another restaurant/office where they were doing cabins for 150,000 (still expensive) or a tent for two for 60,000 (£20).  We still thought we could get it cheaper so we tried the camp next door, but it looked a very mosquito riddled affair and the shower had a dirty hanging towel to hide your modesty so we decided against it.

Returning to the previous camp after quite a drawn out booking (Colombians seem to ignore you at first and then get distracted and do something else whilst serving you) we finally secured our accommodation for the night, a tent for two.  We thought we would try it for one night and maybe book a cabin the next night if camping was not to our liking.

The next problem we had was that it turned out that the campsite did not have lockers and could only offer to put our valuables (passports & cards) in a room with a whole bunch of other bags which everyone had free access too, we didn’t fancy it!  Unfortunately, this meant we would have to carry them round with us on the beaches all day, not ideal!

 

Anyway after checking into our tent and changing into our swimming togs we headed onto the beach that was just through the campsite.  It was quite stunning but again this beach was unsafe for swimming so after taking a few photo’s we set off in the direction of Cabo San Juan, another camping area with a beach with safe bathing.

 

 

Through a gap at the end of the first beach and we found ourselves in a lovely cove with a little restaurant and a couple of fruit vendors.  We had a paddle along the way but we continued onwards to the next bay.

The next bay was La Picina which was again a lovely jungle fringed bay but here it was safe to swim, in fact they had a snorkelling area in the bay where you  might see turtles.  Although there was no café or bar here we thought we would either do some snorkelling here later in the day or tomorrow.

 

 

From this beach we headed back on the path which took us back into the jungle for a further 20 minute walk where we were passed by provision  laden horses.  Eventually we made to Cabo San Juan which was the other camping area and to be fair it looked better than where we were staying.

It was very busy as everyone was coming here before the park was closed.  We headed to the nearby kiosk and bought a couple of cold beers and took them to the beautiful beach where we found a nice shady spot under a tree.  From here we just relaxed with a couple of beers whilst we admired the view, only spoilt by the whistles from the overzealous life guards keeping people from swimming very far from the beach.

 

 

After an hour or so we decided it was time for lunch so went to the onsite restaurant where we thought we had to queue to be served/or to be seated.  Soon a very large queue formed behind us and after about 45 minutes we realised we just had to go to a nearby desk and order the food and find a seat, a bit embarrassing!!

We ordered our food and were given a numbered ticket, but it was quite hard to hear when the waiters were calling the numbers out.  Having said that we did listen very clearly and once our number had been well passed (about 45 minutes later), Shell went and had a word with one of the waiters to see what was happening.

So after nearly 2 hours of messing around we finally got some food.  On a positive note it was a very large portion of chicken, chips and salad and by then it was very welcome.

After the lunch fiasco we headed to the accommodation office to see if they had any cabins for the following day, but they were fully booked for the next week.  A bit disappointed we headed back to the beach to relax.

 

 

Finding another shady spot we settled down and took it in turns to have a refreshing dip in the sea as one of us had to look after our valuables.

It was now getting later in the day so we decided to do the hike back to our camp before it got dusk/dark and more importantly for Shell, before the mosquito’s came out to play.

 We followed the path back the way we came stopping briefly at another campsite we had spotted for a sun downer and to check on their accommodation for the next night.  As with the previous site there was no room at the inn so we finished our drinks and returned to our campsite.

 

 

Arriving back at our site it was getting very bitey for Shell so we quickly joined que’s for a cold shower, followed by a couple of beers before heading for our tent around 7-8.  We spent the rest of the evening in the tent reading stories to each other from the UK’s most notorious serial killers book, just what we needed before having a night under canvas!!