Camping in Tayrona

Our CIA friend had managed to impart to us a considerable sense of caution in regards to our safety in the park. Don't give anyone too much information about your travels, don't hike into the park without a guide....I thought it was all a little dramatic. Julia ate it up and I had to explain to the nina that you can't believe everything everyone says. Plus this guy was borderline arrogant, his advice needed to be filtered. 

So here we are at the entrance of real jungle which we were about to enter sans guide. Our taxi driver insisted it was easy enough to hike in and follow the trail and within minutes we saw for our own eyes an easy enough to follow trail and lots of people hiking it due to the holidays. Nonetheless this jungle was nature, real nature. We trekked through dense forest- palm trees and countless exotic green plants clustered so thick in every direction that that powerful equator sun I've been writing about barely shines through. You best not attempt this hike after the sun goes down. Even still the heat conquers...the air is thick and still. By an hour in we were drenched with sweat and barely half way. Half way through we emerged out of the jungle and reached the beach Arricefes. Because the beach is unswimmable at the first campsite we continued on to El Cabo, a one hour hike down the beach. 

Just as described these stretches of beaches were near empty, tranquil, absent of any human intervention. I mean these beaches look like something out of dinosaur times, unimaginably massive pre-historic boulders border the beach. Not only have I never visited such a beach, I've never seen pictures of such a rare beach. Two and a half sweltering hours later we arrived at our beach camp spot and b-lined to the place to pay for our hammocks.  One minor problem, Angelica and Julia did not bring their passports (at the recommendation of Fabio the hostel owner) nor copies (I did have). They refused to give us hammocks or better yet any sort of campsite. Obviously we had come too far and encountered too many obstacles to get to this park to take no for an answer. I basically told them they were giving us those hammocks, Angelica backed me up. Ten minutes later we were successful, giving them the girls driver's licenses as an alternative. 

The rest of the afternoon was relaxing. We dropped our things off at the hammocks and walked to a quiet beach and spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing and swimming. We hiked a small ways to watch sunset on an entirely vacant beach heading back before it got too dark back to the camp site for a fish dinner and a few shots of aguardiente to facilitate a night's sleep in the hammocks. 

I should have had more aguardiente because I did not find the hammocks easy to sleep in at all. We all woke up shortly after the sun rose, and headed to the "restaurant" for breakfast. About one hour after ordering and no food at our table we deemed this wait too long, even by Colombian standards. You see we had grown accustomed to hour long waits for food by this time but any wait longer you better speak up because they probably forgot about you. While waiting we were approached by an outgoing young Colombian that proceeded to hang out with us at our table while we were waiting (not that he was invited). Turns out his family ran the campground so we asked him to go check on our food and there it was one minute later. Edwin was in love with Angelica and made an admirable effort trying to charm her and convince her to go to the nude beach with him. If you know Angelica you know he did not stand a chance. 

After breakfast we packed a day pack and trekked through the jungle a ways to a secluded beach to spend the day at. By this time Angelica's sunburn from Playa Blanca was still really red so she had to spend the day mostly in the shade with 100 spf. It didn't seem to bother her....Julia and I would be playing in the waves and would glance back on the beach and find her doing various strength training exercises on her towel. She's creative to say the least. Back in Cartagena she used a five liter water jug to weight train in the hotel room. 

By one Julia and I had overstayed our time in the sun, in a big way. We hiked back to the camp to shower our sunburned bodies and got on our way. As we were exiting the park we asked about riding horses out of the park. The price was right so we hopped on. We requested that Julia get the most "tranquilo" horse because she was nervous. I kid you not, I must have been laughing hysterically for the first fifteen minutes of the ride as Julia bounced uncontrollably on the horse looking terrified. The funniest part was that her horse's name was Gringo!

We were thoroughly happy with our decision to ride the horses out, taking in the scenery more intently and arriving to the park entrance ahead of schedule. There we found our favorite taxi driver.....fixing his broke down renault 12!!! We were not surprised in the slightest. There stood three Colombian men all tinkering with the piece of junk. At one point they all tried pushing the car down hill to get it started. One half hour later it was running...we hopped in quickly..afraid it would die again if we didn't act hastily. 

We picked up someone a ways down the road, of course, and putted back to Santa Marta as the sun was setting. Back at Casa Familiar we enquired about getting to Barranquilla. The buses were no longer running so we asked about taxis and were told they would be like $150 usd. Determined to get there that night and for less, we went outside the hotel and started waving down some taxis and asking how much they would charge us. We found one driver for $100 and arranged to leave in about an hour. At 8pm we packed our bulky luggage onto the top of this tiny taxi (wait until you see my picture) and headed to Barranquilla!