Colombia Part 2

Sept 15 - Sept 18

On the morning after we rolled around in mud for twenty minutes and called it an important cultural experience, we woke up at Hostel Mamallena without a plan for the rest of our time in Colombia. We realized that we may have overestimated the number of days we would want to keep blowing money in Cartagena, so we made a split decision to get on a bus leaving twenty minutes later...

For SANTA MARTA. And adventure.

This decision turned out to be an excellent one, but we can't really take all the credit for its ingenuity, because basically we just followed Charlotte and Andreas. They didn't invite us, per se, so much as conversationally share their plans with us over breakfast, but that didn't stop us from suckering on to them like hungry leeches.

Santa Marta is four hours east of Cartagena. After leaving the hostel, the bus stopped for about 45 minutes at a bus station, presumably in hopes of filling that very last seat. Spoiler alert: we did not. Oh, Colombia. So five hours later we arrived at our hostel, The Dreamer, just in time to watch Deuce Bigelow for Monday Movie Night (thank God).

And on Tuesday we spent the day being the stars of our own adventure movie at...

Tayrona National Park

The directions we were given for getting to Tayrona Park by our hostel were, ¨go out to the street and wait for a green and white bus to drive by. You're white, so they'll assume you need a ride.¨ The first green and white bus we saw when we got out to the street was parked, not the correct bus, and the driver was clearly on his break, but we walked up anyway and asked if he was going to Tayrona.  He said no, but that he would take us to a bus that would. This guy drove us to two buses parked on the side of a road. As soon as we got out, one bus driver yelled ¨Tayrona? I'll take you there for 10,000 pesos!¨ The other driver said ¨I'll take you for 7,000! Come with me!¨ We hesitated briefly, thinking maybe the first guy would have a counter offer, but he just shrugged like, ¨fuck it, you win.¨ So we went with the second guy, and looked back to wave to the man who had driven us there, who had even stayed to make sure we got on the right bus. Colombians might take labored, circuitous routes getting from A to B, but they take a genuine interest in helping you get there too.

Our bus was full of Colombians, none of whom were going to Tayrona, and I suspect Tayrona is not even a regular stop for this bus. But I'm not sure that 'regular stops' exist anyway. The bus dropped us at the outside of the park, at which point we could have taken a shuttle to the beginning of the hike. But because we are rugged adventurers, and also because we were unaware of the shuttle at the time, we walked in for about an hour. It was pretty and we saw monkeys, so it was all good.

The real jungle hike, closer to the belly of the park, was absolutely amazing. It's exactly what you would expect a jungle hike to look like if your only frame of reference was Indiana Jones. The hike winds out to the coast, and when you stand on the beach and look back at the forest behind you, with the rows of canopies layered into the hills and deep grey storm clouds rolling over them, it really does look like a movie.

When a dog stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back into him.

The path cuts out to a beach for a moment before continuing on through the trees, and coming from our direction, there was no sign indicating that this wasn't the end of the trail. So we stepped onto the beach, looking for the bar and hammock rental we´d been told would be there. Looking up and down the coast, we saw only a man hurrying over and shouting at us, waving his arms frantically to get our attention. He told us to get off the beach and led us into the trees to where the trail continued. Pointing at a 'Don't go on the beach' sign that we wouldn't have seen until we´d actually crossed the beach, he stared at us and said, incredulous, as though exhausted of explaining this to tourists, 'It's right there. In six languages.' That guy has a thankless role in Colombia's national parks system.

The Forbidden Beach

The park has an option to either hike on one trail to the coast, or to ride horses on another, so on the way out, we chose the horses (which look really healthy and well-cared for, a fact you might doubt if you were looking only at the cheap cost to ride one. But I'm here to tell you, they look good, and that park does not hurt for cash). As we headed out on horseback with a guide walking along beside us, it started to drizzle, and flashes of lightning began showing through the canopy. It took about five minutes for the storm to evolve into thundering downpour. It was absolutely the best. Maybe not the best for all the stuff in our backpacks, but for us it was the best. Because we were riding horses through a Colombian rain forest, in escape from a thunderstorm.

Soaked by the end of the ride, we got in a taxi (which slowed down when we passed pedestrians to ask if they needed a ride -- gotta fill that middle seat), and ate quesadillas at the hostel in celebration of 'Mexican Night.'

Coffee Farm

And what could possibly top that epic adventure but a sedate tour of a coffee farm, amirite? Wednesday we headed to Minca to learn about coffee production. Our tour guide Jorge picked us up, along with a couple from Scotland, Catherine and David (lot of couples going on in the South America backpacking scene), and drove us for an hour and a half in his taxi sedan up mountain roads riddled with potholes and rocks that scraped alarmingly against the undercarriage of the car. People who had done this tour previously said they had gone in a Jeep, which, in retrospect, makes a lot of sense. Our taxi stalled out pretty regularly.

The beans go over here...

Jorge took us first to a waterfall where he allowed us to frolic, while he sat, with an eye on his watch, among the other parents grouped on the banks watching their kids jump off of rocks. After about half an hour he gestured that it was time to go, and we hiked out and drove on to the coffee farm. The guide at the farm said she didn't speak English, and so she gave the tour in Spanish while I translated/grossly paraphrased for the others. Colombians speak Spanish quickly, and kind of slush their words together, which makes them difficult to understand even for other native Spanish speakers, let alone gringos who took high school classes. So my translation went something like: "The coffee....goes over here....and then it goes up there....and then people clean it..." Solid stuff. A+. On the way out I heard her giving a tour in English to another group.

The farm was gorgeous, all hilly and green and Colombian. And I don't really drink coffee, so this doesn't mean a ton coming from me, but that was the best coffee I've ever had! Eian DOES drink coffee, and he says the same thing, but he's been known to exaggerate, so I guess neither of us can be trusted. You'll just have to go to Minca for the truth.

Yes hello, I need coffee please, it´s an emergency.

For lunch Jorge drove us to a tiny, one-table restaurant that was pretty much a guy's living room. He served us juiced mangoes that he'd pulled off the tree outside his house, and some meat with plantains. It was one of the best meals we had in Colombia. When we left, the cook gave me a plastic cup so I could take the rest of my mango juice to go, which became a tricky balancing act every time we hit a massive bump in the road on the way down the mountain.

Enrique Iglesias's "Bailando" came on the radio and Jorge cranked the volume all the way up. The subject of Enrique prompted Catherine and David to ask us, genuinely baffled, where Pit Bull had come from, and why he keeps shouting about being well traveled.

Legit dining establishment

Thursday morning we got on a bus headed back West to Cartagena.  We only drove around in circles for about an hour picking up passengers before we officially left Santa Marta. A little girl in a Rapunzel dress got carsick and vomited next to Eian. And we were off!

Next up is our journey to the Panamanian border, which is nuts.