The night in my backpacker hostel was
relatively quiet, at least after 11:30 pm. The wall made of acrylic glass is a
detail worth reconsidering as I experienced life in the Kasa Guane like in an
Indonesian shadow puppet theatre. Breakfast is in bed – yoghurt and
granadillas. Then it´s time to get myself and my bag ready for hitting the
road. It´s going to be interesting – the airline allows 15 kg, but my bag
weighs 19. That´s gonna cost me… I take a cab to the far-away airport and arrive
early. It seems to be the first day at work for the man attending me. He needs
a lot of help for everything. When he puts the sticker “Santa Marta” on my bag,
someone else takes it away and puts it with the other luggage for that flight.
Unfortunately the person responsible for the check-in didn´t look at the scales
and now doesn´t know the weight. After a short moment he just writes “15k”.
Hah! After check-in I have a
capuchino on the terrace, have an empanada and get to the waiting room. Boarding
starts almost half an hour late, but it doesn´t matter as it´s only a 30-seater
twin engine plane. I can´t bring any luggage on board, everything needs to
travel in the luggage compartments. I hope it will, travel I mean. Or else I´m
screwed.
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| Typical snack - fried ant in bags (and no, I didn´t try it) |
There´s not much space on this little plane,
but it´s only a 1-hour flight. The flight is calm and the views are wonderful.
When the door opens I realize where I am – hot, humid air invades the cabin
within seconds.
I pick up my bag and my backpack and get a cab to Santa Marta,
to where the buses to Tayrona National Park leave. The bus is already waiting,
ready to get going. What a coincidence – so am I. I´m glad I zipped off the
legs of my pants and swapped my trekking sneakers for my flip-flops!
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| Santa Marta market scene taken at the bus stop |
It´s a
45-minute ride to the Ecohostal Yuluka, where I spent beautiful days in 2011.
They remember me and I remember the cabin – it´s the same as 2 years ago, el
colibrí – the hummingbird.
I spend the next 1 ½ hours lounging and reading
in the pool. Then a shower, a short trip to the next little shop to treat me to
an ice cream, then more reading, now in my hammock. Gosh, how I´d love to have
one on my balcony!
When it´s time for
dinner I go to the restaurant and order red snapper in garlic sauce and as
dessert brownie and strawberry ice cream. I drink fresh mango juice and the
obligatory Club Colombia. Then back to my air-conditioned room and time for
some more Big Bang Theory. I´d love to habe WB TV. German cable sucks! I also pack my small bag for one night
in the Tayrona National park and then switch off the light.
I have breakfast at 7:30: scrambled eggs,
bread, fresh juice and, of course, Café de Colombia. Nelly, the owner of the
hostel (which is a misleading name as it´s much more of a little boutique
hotel), takes an Italo-Colombian couple (Laura and Fabbiano) and me to the park
entrance, where I part with $37.000 (€ 15) and get on board a bus to the place
where the trail starts (to be paid extra). It´s hot and sticky in the jungle.
Within minutes I´m drenched in sweat. I talk to Laura while enjoying the jungle
walk. We see insects and birds, an aguti (kind of a big guinea pig on long
legs) and many blue-winged Morpho butterflies. Every couple of meters we have
to make a big step to avoid walking right through the paths of the leafcutter
ants. It´s a gorgeous walk. Finally the roar of the sea is getting louder and
the long white beach of Arrecifes (“reefs”) with its turquoise waters and
pounding waves is right in front of us. Coconut palm trees and green hills form
the backdrop. We follow the trail to the beach and leave the dense vegetation
and shade behind. It´s almost unbearably hot but this beach is not for
swimming, the currents are deadly.
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| Morpho with closed wings |
It´s 10 minutes on the soft and deep sand of
the beach until we reach a camp ground. Time for a much-deserved break and a
cold drink in the shade. We march on, along a lagoon with herons, egrets and,
as the signs say, dangerous caimans.
I leave Laura and Fabbiano when I see the
path to the camp ground where I have a hut for the night, Finca Bukarú. I want
to leave my stuff there and buy cold water. The hut isn´t ready yet, but maybe
it´s better not to see it in order to keep the spirit. They don´t look to
promising. The next beach in La Arenilla – picture a small cove with golden
sand, palm trees swaying in the soft breeze, huge round rocks in the crystal
clear bluish green water. Got it? Does it look anything like this?
I meet Laura and Fabbiano again but they are
ready to walk on. I stay a bit and have a splash in the warm waters. I stay in
the water for more than 45 minutes while my body temperature goes back to
normal. I walk on to the next beach, La Piscina, which is a long beach fine for
swimming.
But I want to walk on to the next beach, the Cabo San Juan de Guía,
some 30 minutes further to the west. The beach is busy and I would have moved
on, but I see Laura and Fabbiano and stay with them for a while. And of course
I have another splash in the transparent waters.
Then I walk to the next beach,
the so-called Playa Nudista, but there´s nobody in their birthday suit. Well,
there´s hardly anybody on this mile-long crescent-shaped beach anyway. The
water is a transparent light blue and the hills that frame it are covered in
dense vegetation. The sun has disappeared behind dark clouds, which makes the
heat a bit more bearable. I swim and read and read and swim.
When the clouds
get really dark I decide to return to La Arenilla, which is only 10 minutes
from where my hut is. I spend more time swimming (well, alright, standing in
the water) while most other people head for the exit – everybody not staying at
one of the official camp grounds has to leave the park by 5 pm.I go back to the Finca to finally move into my new
home, a ramshackle building with very basic facilities. Still, it looks clean
and there is even light as long as the generator is running. The place is OK
for one night but just imagining that it costs as much as the nice bungalow I
stayed in last night… Well, that´s the price you have to pay if you want to
spend the night in the park.
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| I wonder what my students would say if this were there accommodation on a field trip... or there parents for that matter... |
I take a cool shower and then the thunderstorm
begins. The roof seems to be OK. I run over to the restaurant and order a cold
lemonade. What on earth am I going to do tonight until it´s time to catch some
sleep?!? I watch some stupid Colombian soaps and finally am ready to order
dinner: barracuda steak with fries and rice. Very tasty! Thunderstorm after
thunderstorm hits the shore and then the generator goes dead. We sit in the
dark for an hour, but they manage to repair it. I decide to go the hut and try
to sleep as I´ve got a terrible headache. I fall asleep under the mosquito net within
minutes.
The sunlight that filters through the many
cracks in the walls wakes me up in the morning. It looks a bit like in those
sci-fi movies when aliens come to abduct you. I open the door and take in the
view. A horse is grazing under the
coconut palm trees and I can see the waves as they hit the beach. It´s hot
already, and it´s only 7:30 am!
Time to do a bit of walking before the day
tourists invade the park. La arenilla is deserted, except for me of course. I
enjoy the quiet and soak in the water for a while, but then move on to the
Playa Nudista and now it´s easy to see where it´s got its name from. I stay in
the water for nearly two hours and don´t leave because I feel cold – far from
it.
I walk back to La Arenilla for a last splash, then head back to my hut,
have a shower, pack my bag, have another shower and then it´s time to walk back
to where the buses leave. A long, long, long walk and it´s so very, very, very
hot. I see monkeys in the trees and millions of lizards and iguanas, some more
agutis and many insects, but I can´t really enjoy it, I´m close to fatigue.
Whenever I stop my glasses fog up – how ironic! The many bird songs are
fantastic and create a truly mesmerizing atmosphere.
At last, I´ve made it, now
all I have to do is wait for the bus to take me to the entrance. I have to wait
for 30 minutes… At the entrance I take a moto taxi to the eco hostal, about 2km
away.
I get my bag from the storage room, carry it to
Colibrí, have a shower, wash my shirt and shorts under the shower, then head for
the pool and stay in there motionless for an hour until it starts to rain.
The
a/c is on full blast to dry my clothes while I read a bit in the hammock and
then have dinner: again red snapper in garlic sauce and as dessert brownie and
strawberry ice cream. Laura and Fabbiano show up, too and we have beers and
talk. Back at Colibrí I switch on the TV and write my blog. It´s around
midnight when I switch off the light. It´s wonderful to hear all the animal
sounds. Maybe I should record them and listen to them at home. Maybe that would
help to sleep better…
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