Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Taganga
Taganga my friend. Spent Xmas here, a very sleepy little fishing town which attracts tourists for its cheap diving. I didnt dive, if God had wanted me to go underwater I would have gills and fins. Instead I lounged around, got stoned, read and took some photos. Also, met up with some French friends, Laurent and Barbara, we made in Panama and spent a very pleasant Xmas Eve with them, we had a lovely meal, some wine, some grass, some rum and went dancing in the only club in town "El Garaje", thats "The Garage" to you.
Winners
So, the following morning, I woke up at 7am, precisely an hour and a half after going to bed. The plan was to go to Parque Tayrona for the day and spend some time chillaxing on the beaches there, which you have to hike through forest for 45 minutes to reach. It costs $15 to get in, about 9 pounds roughly. I heard a rumour that you could walk down the beach for 45 minutes and get in for free, always looking for a cheaper alternative I set off with 4 others whilst the rest if the group took the bus, the schmucks!
We walked along the beach for an hour, obviously this is tougher than walking on a road but we pushed on, the landscape was stunning and we stopped to pilfer some coconuts and broke them open to drink from them. We reached a point where the beach was broken by a deep and very fast flowing river feeding into the ocean. As we were carrying bags swimming was out of the question, luckily one point was crossable by foot, although the water was over waist height and the current perilous. We carried on walking, for another 2 hours until we reached some huts on the beach, inhabited by fishermen. We asked how much further to the Park, hoping it was just round the corner. Another 3 hours they said, and impossible to reach because of the cliffs ahead.
Great.
Rather deflated we held an emergency meeting. Everyone but me wanted to turn back. Fine by me, but I was determeined to get to the park, I was now high on exhaustion and running on emergency energy, light headed and determined. Fortunately one of my colleagues, Chris from Canada, the guy in the photo, changed his mind and said he too wanted to reach the park. Chris and I had been partying together the night before so it felt right that we should carry on this epic journey. We left the quitters behind and walked through a banana plantation to reach the main road where we walked into town a further half hour, got on a bus for 10 minutes and eventually reached the outskirts of the park. We then walked another 45 minutes through forest, up and down the tracks, and then a further 45 minutes until we finally met some of our group, who were now heading back to their bus as it was time to leave!
Elated, exhausted and triumphant Chris and I posed for photos, rested for 10 minutes, told the story of our adventure to anyone who listened (which we greatly embelished with stories of dinosaurs and bear attacks), before walking back an hour and a half back to the bus, for a lift home.
That night the party was a little bit more subdued funnily enough.
Twister!
The organizers had hired a sound system, which was very loud and went on until 5 every morning, lucky we had no neighbours to disturb!
On the 2nd night, I must admit I got a little bit drunk, but this was a good thing, because under the careful tuition of a couple of the girls I became, for one night only, the greatest Salsa dancer in the world, ever! The booze definitely helped, I progressed swiftly, although not entirely gracefully from the basic forwards/backwards, to side to side, to side to side with a step, onto spins, Merengue and God knows what ever else. The next day unfortunately I was unable to repeat the feat, sobriety had robbed me of my dancing shoes, although I received many compliments on my dance floor prowess from some rather surprised Colombians.
Parque Tayrona
The CS National Meeting took place about half an hour from Parque Tayrona, Colombias finest national park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayrona_National_Natural_Park
Mike and I went and bought tents and ground mats, some Pot Noodles and a couple of bottles of Aguardiente (Colombian Fire Water to you and I) and set off to meet about 70 other CSers, mainly Colombian and South American, some Europeans and Americans. We didn´t really know what to expect, and were very pleasantly surprised to be staying in a totally unspoilt environment, camped out 100 metres from the beach, a mile or two away from the road; no cars, hotels, restaurants or discos for miles. After building a bonfire and doing a group introduction the partying got going, Aguardiente, rum, salsa and.......
Colombia
So, it has been quite some time has it not dear reader? This is partly due to the fact that I have been in Colombia for 2 weeks now and having an awesome time, so awesome in fact, I couldn´t tear myself away from the awesomeness to write about it.
So what exactly have I been doing? Well, we arrived in Cartagena, following a gruelling 5 day trip on a sail boat, were eventually allowed onto land at the port and stayed in cartagena for about 3 days. Cartagena is gorgeous, some say South Americas most beautiful city, for its old town dates back hundreds of years and is fortified by a wall that was built to protect from attacks by the likes of fearsome pirates and Empire building Brits.
In Cartagena we hooked up with some CouchSurfers and found out about the Couch Surfing Colombia National Meeting, which sounded very formal but in fact was a 3 day party, camping on one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in the world, crystal clear water, white sand, palm trees, jungle and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains to cap off the landscape.
