Colombia: Carribean Coast
Ok, I hoped to update this blog roughly weekly but my noble aim has already failed as badly as an ITV sitcom. The reason for this lax approach has been that Paul and I have been mad busy hitting up the Carribean coast in Colombia, with the need to blog being subsumed to the need to consume as much alcohol as possible . Thankfully, I now have a couple of hours free to write, due to the fact we´re currently waiting on a night bus to whisk us away from the colonial paradise of Cartegena and towards the ex-stomping ground of Pablo Escobar, Medellin.
Bay view in Taganga
Turning the clock back two weeks to our previous blogpost and Santa Marta. The city itself was nothing special, consisting as it did of a reasonable beach overrun by middle class colombians holidaying, the city did, however, feature the most homoerotic statue we´d ever seen, so that I suppose that was kind of a bonus. Spending a couple of nights we subsequently left for the ex-fishing village of Taganga located a few miles up the coast. A few years a go this village was apparently unpaved and a relaxed haven inhabited mainly by dazed hippies doing poi and generally buggering about. Today Taganga has become a permanent feature on the backpackers circuit, with pricks like us descending like the locusts we are. This has meant the village has developed into somewhat of a traveller haven with fishing boats being outnumbered by dive schools and hostels crowding out homes.
Jungle fringed beaches of Parque Nacional Tayrona
Thankfully Paul and I crave a bit of the inauthentic and we had a pretty awesome time there, basing ourselves in the least professional hostel and hanging out with Aussies (the good sort). In between the hectic schedule of sleeping/reading/drinking on beach/hammocks/bars we took a few trips. The first was to Tayrona, a national park whose entrance sign makes the syntaxically challenged claim of: ’welcome to the paradise.’
This claim is easy to understand, with the park featuring some stunning beaches fringed by aesthetically pleasing jungle. Yet for us Tayrona actually proved to be a bit of a faff. The journey there was meant to take 45 minutes but actually became a 2.30 hour marathon due to the fact we were being driven around by the most inept person in the world. Seriously, this guy made Jedward look like motherfuckin shaft. It took us almost an hour to leave the tiny confines of Taganga, with one particularly low point involving the driving reversing 50m up the road due to the fact the way was blocked by a sleeping dog. This is not a joke.
When we finally did arrive we were confronted by a huge trek to get to our campsite, only to find on arrival that it was sold out due to the amount of holidaying Colombians (the fuckers). We were also ripped off for food and drink, with our first meal being accompanied with a dead fly. After a bit of a marathon trek with all our stuff we finally managed to find somewhere to stay, paying $3 dollars for a mangy hammock. This was to prove a mistake as the lack of mosquito net led to us being eaten to the point where Paul´s feet and my hands looked like the plague had returned in a heavily localised form. To cap matters we also managed to spend a night talking to the most annoying Englishman in Colombia, a conspiracy theorist whose intelligence seemed to know no start.
Returning from ‘the paradise’ we decided to sign up for a trek to the ‘lost city,’ a settlement built by the Tayronas and only recently discovered by treasure hunters in the 1970s. Adding to the excitement was the somewhat checkered history of the trek itself; in 2003 a group of tourists were kidnapped by narco terrorists precipitating the current situation where soldiers are dotted around the city and surrounding jungle.
Atop the Ciudad Perdida
Due to depart we were somewhat underwhelmed to find our tour group consisted of around 25 people, instead of the maximum of 14 the travel agent promised. Happily, our initial scepticism was soon displaced as it turned out that everyone on the trek was really lovely. The trek itself was pretty awesome taking 3 days of fairly hard walking, mostly up, to reach the site and 2 days to return. The jungle itself was spectacular and an added bonus was everytime you felt knackered a stunning waterfall would somehow turn up precipitously for people to cool off and swim in. The trip was also spiced up by a visit to a cocaine factory and the occasional encoutner with the Kogi, an indigenous tribe who inhabit the area. Unnvervingly Kogi children had a tendency to suddenly appear out of the darkness at night, skitting around the campsite like ghostly apparitions.
Reaching the city itself was also brilliant, finally coming into view following a pretty punishing climb of 1200 steps in 30+ degree heat and 80% humidity. I was amongst the first to arrive and encountering the city was a pretty overwhelming experience, with the central plateau of the site offering panoramic views of the jungle, with the sense of awe heightened by the sense of isolation of being so far from anywhere. I spent much of the afternoon gazing on this view whilst listening to Four Tet and Dirty Projectors and serendipitously reading about the concept of the sublime in Alain de Botton’s ace book, ‘The art of travel.’
High points in the Lost City
Leaving the city the return journey was pretty fun as it involved running down lots of steep slopes, in my case listening to loud breaks music, like a running version of F Zero-X (paul’s comparison). Returning dirty but happy to Taganga we consquently spent the next couple of days chilling with a variety of people we had met whilst on the lost city, with Paul also doing his PADI (diving) qualification. As this took him 3 days I left him to for the last day and hitched a ride on the back of a pick up truck with 3 people from the trek towards Colombia’s fourth largest and least interesting city Baranquilla. We didn´t stay for long and instead hopped on a bus towards the beautiful port city of Cartegena, a city which has the distinction of having been bombarded by that arch lad himself, Francis Drake.
That’s pretty much it and I now am going to rejoin paul in the bus centre, unfortunately he is feeling pretty shitty (literally) and I´m praying he doesn’t burst during the 13 hour journey to Medellin. Wish me luck.
Update: Well we got to Medellin in a coach whose temperature was set to artic levels, bloody max aircon. The journey was also not aided by a crying baby and the loud showing of a pirated Spanish copy of Avatar. Making matters worse is that Paul has got come down with something, probably from the stodgy food here, meaning he has been bed ridden all day. Sucks. Seriously the food here is lethal, most people we’ve hung out with have been sick at some point, indeed this is Paul’s third time since I got here 3 weeks a go. For some reason, despite eating exactly the same food, I’ve felt all good, though I’m sure my time will come.
