FROM THE JUNGLE TO THE CARIBBEAN

Given massive pressure from the main editor and "Organisator" (pictured below),
I had to finally contribute to this delicate joint literary exercice of writing something interesting about Colombia and about three half-grown-ups travelling there.

So, after crazy cycling/trekking at celestial heights, we were all craving for the Colombian holidays as they advertise them usually: blue skies, blue Carribean waters and lonely sand beaches. At least the latter one proved difficult to get during the main Colombian holiday season around Epiphany, which did however not take away the charm of this part of our trip.

After an almost endless bus transfer from El Cocuy to Santa Marta, we decided to head immediately for the (according to the - overall rather mediocre - Lonely Planet at least) laid-back beach town Taganga for some relaxation: The little bay is idyllic, the beach beautiful, but it was hard to see the sand when we arrived, as virtually every square meter was covered by someone. Indeed, we discovered what beach holidays "a la colombiana" means: the whole family packed together under the burning sun, generally with some local Aguila or Club Colombia beer at hand, and the kids only in the water. And 50 cm further, the next family. The density was impressive, but so was also the atmosphere, thanks to the genuinely cheerful nature of Colombians.

Having found a nice room at Casa Blanca right on the beach, there was no reason to leave quickly, so we spent two days in the crowded little Taganga, the main highlights being a long night of dancing in a packed open-air club and lunch at Las Velas fish restaurant, where we could choose our fish directly from the fridge (a guy also brought two living lobsters out of the water to the friendly lady of the restaurant while we were paying), observe iguanas racing above our heads in the trees and wait for our food for almost two hours, which had at least the advantage for Raymond to be able to test in the meantime all the cocktails from the beach bar next by.

On Monday, 9 January, we finally wanted to fulfil Ray´s dream and go to the jungle, i.e. to the Tayrona National Park, which stretches eastwards from Taganga for about 35km along the coast and into the mountains of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
As usual, we almost kept the Olympic timing foreseen by Organisator Fede and started with about two hours "delay" our trip to the entry point of the park, from where we hiked through the first bits of jungle-like forest to the coast and then along various beaches to Cabo de San Juan, where, after another delicious fried fish and the discovery of incredible hords of Argentinian Gabriela Sabbatini imitators, we found out that there were no more hammocks left and that we would not make it to the more lonely beach we had initially hoped to reach...
So we finally made it back to the beach of Arrecifes for a romantic night in rather fancy hammocks to the sound of the waves. And as life goes, we met again by pure chance with Alberto, our Spanish friend who had spent some time with us in Villa de Leyva.

But the real jungle came the next day. Somehow missing the physical effort we had gotten so used to in El Cocuy, we decided to hike up to El Pueblito, the (scarce) remnants of an old indigenous settlement, hidden beautifully somewhere in the jungleous mountains of Parque Tayrona. While the fauna was really amazing, we could have done better in terms of spotting tigers, cobras and gorillas.
We did however see an incredibly big spider, blue butterflies and zillions of ants carrying each the equivalent of a 30-ton-truck along real "ant highways".
And to keep up with our ambition, we raced on right away from El Pueblito for some two more hours of power-walking up and down back to the road, which brought us back to Taganga and from there to Cartagena, after a painfully slow and inexplicably delayed bus ride of 6 hours - which led to the ridiculous situation that three dirt-and-dust-covered trekkers in shorts and short sleeves with huge backpacks showed up at 23h30 in front of Cartagena´s best restaurant ("La Vitrola"), asking whether they could use the bathrooms to fulfil the minimum standards for being actually allowed in to eat there...
The miracle is: it worked.

Not only because of the excellent arrival dinner and drinks did Cartagena keep up to what we had all expected (and for my part remembered): strolling through the charming streets of the old town with its coloured houses, wooden balconies and generous flowers, discovering churches and jewelry shops and chatting about the things that really matter in life, was pure pleasure. Eating ceviche (fish soup) / ice cream with Ray / Fede in extasy over his dish as well. Too bad we had to leave that very first (and last) day...




Christophe (back in Bogota, 12 January 2012)