October Break Part 2 – La Guajira

COLOMBIA TIP #14 – There is more variety in this country than the number of mosquito bites I got (which is a lot).

By the time our two days in Tayrona were over, we were ready for a real shower.  Seawater, sweat, and sunscreen can really make you feel gross.  Unfortunately, we were still in for two days of Colombian camping.  Fortunately, they were in the department La Guajira!

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday and hopped in the car to Cabo de la Vela, La Guajira.  It was an extremely long drive (I think around 6 hours?  But felt like many more).  We had the chance to get out and take pictures at the bridge that separated the departments Magdelana and La Guajira.

It was also pretty interesting stopping for gas along the way.  Libardo and Ricardo’s technique seemed to be buying small amounts of gas very often, which seemed strange to Elia, Vero, and I.  We would stop at little shacks along the side of the road and the gasoline was in old 2L pop bottles.  As we got closer to the border of Venezuela, they explained how the gas we were getting was contraband from Venezuela – while it was $30,000 pesos here, it would only be $5,000 or $10,000 pesos!  (Suzie I. in Venezuela, you are in the right place for gas!)

We finally arrived after taking full advantage of the 4-wheel drive of our SUV, driving through mud and very rocky terrain.  Here is some of the scenery we saw – reminds me of South Africa!

And here’s a look at the windows after we trekked through.

We got our hammocks set up under a hut right by the beach again!

We then went to a nearby beach near a giant hill called the Pilon de Azucar (Sugar Loaf – I’m fairly sure it wasn’t sugar and I have no idea why it is called a loaf).  At this point, I must have been suffering from allergies from the dust because I was not feeling the greatest, but it was still a lovely beach with freezing cold water.

Did I mention the water was freezing?

We stayed there for a few hours just hanging out before heading back to our hut.  We walked along the beach and got an awesome view of the sunset.

The kite surfers added some entertainment value!

No sunset pictures would be complete without some jumping pictures!  Here are a few in sequence that show our failed and finally successful attempts.

Vero setting up the timer on the camera for our jumping pictures.

Once again, I was shown how small the world can actually be when we came across three Canadians who are currently teaching in Bogota – Caity, Travis, and Andrea!  To make the world even smaller, Andrea was in Trent Con-Ed and came to Queen’s for her B.Ed year!  Of all places, the middle of no where in La Guajira is where you can find more teaching friends.

As we were getting ready for bed, the lady of the family that ran the accommodations prepared some tea for my stuffed up nose and headache, and it definitely worked!  The stars were covered by clouds again, so I was not impressed.

The next day, we drove over to another beach that I don’t know the name of – I will call it Cliff Beach.  To get down to the sand, you either jump over the cliff or follow a path.  We stuck with the path.  It also had a beautiful lookout onto the open ocean that we hiked up to and took way too many pictures of.

We headed back to our hammocks and came across two people from Michigan.  As we meet more people that are just travelling, I am starting to wonder when I can just pack my bags and leave for months at a time to see the world.  It would definitely be neat (sorry Mom and Dad)!  We couldn’t help but take more pictures of another lovely sunset and headed to bed fairly early because we were set to wake up at 4am for the long drive back.  By the way, the stars came out!  I was happy.

We didn’t end up waking up at 4am.  We woke up at 4:30am.  And the bumpy car ride did not allow us to get some more sleep on the way.  After more hours or speaking some Spanish with the tour guides, playing “I’m-Thinking-Of-A-Character-20-Questions”, and some short naps, we stopped in a city where we were going to do some shopping for the famous bags of La Guajira.  The aboriginals from the department weave these beautiful bags together and the three of us wanted these as souvenirs from our trip.  After scouring the vendors for the perfect combination of colour and pattern, we each decided on one!

October Break Part 1 – Santa Marta & Tayrona

COLOMBIA TIP #1 – Please forget all of your stereotypes, negative thoughts, and preconceived ideas about Colombia – this country is AWESOME.

Colombia is incredible.  Thankfully, we had a well-deserved week off of school and Vero, Elia, and I embarked on a trip to Santa Marta, Parque Tayrona, La Guajira, and Cartagena.  All of these places are located on the northern coast of Colombia.

When we walked off the plane in Santa Marta on Saturday, we were immediately hit with a heat wave.  This place was much hotter than cold, rainy Armenia!  We found our hostel and decided to wander around the city.  The problem was there wasn’t a whole lot to see!  We had heard that the beaches in Santa Marta were some of the most beautiful in Colombia, and so we were slightly disappointed.  Some of the other beaches nearby are a 10-20 minute drive away from the downtown, so we grabbed a cab and headed to a beach called Tagonga.  We took a 10 minute hike to get to the beach, passing an old man in his underwear that took up residence in an abandoned brick house.  It was fairly busy, but the best beach we had seen so far.

Vero, Me, and Elia ready for vacation!

Looking back on Tagonga on our hike to the beach

The old man’s house.  He must have to help tourists find their way long the path often!

That night, we called Libardo, who was going to be our guide for the next four days, and discovered that he would be picking us up at 5:30am the next morning.  So with our new friends from France/Switzerland that we met at the hostel, we went out for dinner and went to bed early.  It was interesting going out for dinner with people who had been travelling for months and were short on money – they were really angry when the restaurant said the meal was $7,000 pesos rather than the original $6,500 pesos (which in reality is a difference of $2.50).  Luckily, the restaurant switched it back, but for us three with jobs, we had a totally different mindset.

On Sunday morning, bright and early, we met Libardo and his brother Ricardo as we drove about 45 minutes to enter Parque Tayrona.  It is a National Park that is filled with beaches and mountains – an interesting combination! 

A not-so-subtle-pointing-posed picture.

And the morning wouldn’t be complete without some coffee!

We drove along the bumpy road to a few beaches and lookouts for photo-ops before heading to the beach where we would get on a boat to our final destination for the day.  The little tin fishing boat against the open ocean made for a wet ride!

We arrived at a beach called Sinto where we spent the rest of Sunday.  It was a private beach with cottage-like places there, so we were staying at the cottage of a friend of Libardo’s!  We were on the beach all day, reading, relaxing, swimming, napping, and doing absolutely nothing.  And it was wonderful.  We had chicken and fish for our meals with lots of patacons (flattened fried plantain fruits).  We even got our own fresh coconut water!

The biggest downside to Sinto was the number of mosquitoes that came around at night.  Our foreign blood was mighty tasty to these bugs apparently!  We slept in hammocks hung inside the main room of the cottage, which sounded cool at first, but made for sore bodies in the morning.

These are our hammocks rolled up after we slept (we didn’t get pictures of them laid out unfortunately!)

The next day (Monday), we took a short boat ride to another beach called Playa Cristal (beach = playa in Spanish).  Tourists can visit this beach each day, so around 10am was when the rush began.  People were brought in by boat and the beach filled up quickly.

Here, I tried to hop up on the tree for a picture.  Instead, I just hurt myself and was embarrassed.

Vero and I are buddies.

Luckily, our awesome guide Libardo hooked us up with some hammocks hung between some trees on the beach, so that was our home base for the day.  We met a couple people from England and saw many potential North Americans from a distance as well.  Everybody had to start leaving the beach around 3, so by 4:30 the beach was ours once again, along with the families that live in the area.  Our meals consisted of more fish, more chicken, more patacons, and some rice, but it was still delicious.  We had to get used to these meals for the next few days.  We kept our home base for the night and slept on our hammocks on the beach.  Luckily, we got our hands on some bug spray and mosquito nets, so we avoided more bites.  You’d think the stars would be awesome, but it was cloudy.  So I was constantly looking out for stars every night after that one!