Santa Marta, in Colombia, is a quiet town located near Taganga (cheapest place to dive in South America), Tayrona Park (a national park) and Minca, that I plan to visit in a couple of days.
Recipe for Tayrona: Take the taxi to Mercador (i.e. the public market; 5000 COP using this technique), then a buseta to Tayrona entrance (El Zaino, 7000 COP). The entrance fee is 48.500 COP, or 11.000 for locals or foreigners with a VISA. Supposedly as a student you have a discount, but the guy’s face said another story…
In Tayrona, you may want to spend the night, but it’s not entirely sure: getting to the beach is a bit demanding, and you might just want to go back and get clean, after sweating and walking in the mud for so long… Anyhow, before the entrance, you can book a hammock or tent. I book a hammock in Don Pedro (20.000 COP), because even though the hammock in El Cabo is more appealing, the fact that they don’t have mosquito nets there is a deal breaker.
Back to the El Zaino entrance (there are two, and I haven’t seen the other one): you pay 3000 COP to take a shuffle to the entrance of the footpath. You can walk of course, but it’d be a boring first hour of walking, and a few more are waiting. Ten minutes later you’re there, and you’re on for a good 2 hours 30 of walking! Or horse riding if you feel like it, but no, you are an adventurer, you will walk through mud and horse poo if you have to!
In Arrecifes are a few campings, and I spent the night in Don Pedro. Bad choice…
The first 3.2 km lead you to Arrecifes. Heat, dirt, trees, bird sounds, and occasionally, mud, and horse poo, with varying concentration. For simplicity let’s just agree to call this mixture ‘mud’.
Walk, walk, walk, diving into the tropical mood… until you reach Arrecifes.
There you have a choice to make: go straight, or turn right. And since the mud goes straight, it means the horses go there, so it should be the right path. And you keep walking in this peaceful atmosphere, your body sweating as you make your way before the big rocks, trying to find the path of least resistance across the swarm, working your balance as you cross on a trunk, crossing water.
You continue the walk, alternating between beaches (the first two are forbidden due to strong currents) and tropical jungle, until you reach La Piscina, where you can go for a swim, and after that El Cabo, where you could spend the night on a hammock. These places are real-world postcards, beautiful and peaceful. On a Saturday, it was not even that crowded, particularly compared to Playa Blanca, near Cartagena.
If you want more peace, walk 8 more minutes, cross another swamping, lower yourself to avoid the heavy branches at one point, and there, you arrive to Playa Nudista. As you may have inferred, this is the nudist beach. And despite its name, no one will force you to undress. Hence, only a few naked people (mostly guys, obviously), but more importantly much fewer people than in the previous beach. I was under the impression that the waves were a bit stronger there, also. See the stiff slope below.
Another fun thing to do is to climb the massive rocks that surround the beaches. Pretty sure it’s not autorised, so don’t tell my parents I’ve been up there… It was so nice that I actually spent a couple of hours, hearing only the sound of the water, splashing on the rocks, some small crabs coming up, lizards slithering on the next rock.
It’s 3pm, and I regret having paid for a hammock in Arrecifes, because it’s pretty far… Better go now. So, let’s walk for about an hour, arrive at the camping, get a shower, wash a bit the clothes aaaaaaaannnd it’s night time.
Spaghettis at the camping restaurant for 18.000 COP, then off to bed. It’s approximately 6:30. It’s noisy, both due to a generator and people speaking very loudly. It’s getting cold, and the only dry clothes I have are two T-shirts, two pair of socks and an underwear, so I put everything on. Still cold. I try to cover my body with as much of the hammock as I can, but here comes the predicament: to cover your legs you need to stretch them high up, which quickly feels uncomfortable, so you put them on the side, much more flat and comfortable, but them you are cold. And obviously, the two hammocks next to you are taken, and they are close. So close than if you open your legs too much they touch. Or if the guy moves, they touch. And these guys don’t mind being noisy, so even if you were to make one stop the next one would be noisy too… Long story short: bad night, it’s 7am, let’s get up and go back to the beach.
Time has become an abstract concept, since my phone drowned yesterday. Just a small wave, but still enough to make him go nuts and refuse recharging. So, on Saturday there was no internet, and on Sunday, no time and no pictures. Well, that’s forced disconnection, and it’s not too bad. If only you could disconnect from yourself it’d be perfect. Almost empty Playa Nudista, which is the last you can go to using this path. Back up on my very private rocks, and I venture higher up than where I went yesterday, staying there a couple of hours, writing, at some point. And then, let’s go back to Santa Marta, in order to get there early enough to change hostel if the Tiki Hut is full.
In conclusion: very nice park, enjoyable and long walk, gorgeous beaches, I wish I had booked in El Cabo, also wish I had brought more money to not be bothered by that
Expenses:
- Taxi to/from Merkador: 2x5000 COP
- Buseta from/to Santa Marta to/from Tayrone: 2x7000 COP
- Entrance: 48.500 COP
- Shuffle bus: 2x3000
- Water: 2000 COP before (brought 2.5 liters of water), and 6000 COP in the park (2 bottles of 600 mL)
- Coconut: 3000 COP in the park, opened by local folks
- Camping: 20.000 COP
- Diner: 18.000 COP
- Food brought to the park: approximately 14.000 in nuts and cereal or chocolate bars.
In total: 141.500 COP = 41.2 €
Note on the clothing: as a way to test my sport gear, I was wearing walking shoes and polyester long-sleeved shirt and pants. The long sleeves were not really a problem: while doing the intense parts, it felt quite adequate, as if keeping the right level of heat next to your skin and not getting full of sweat, and they are fairly easy to wash and don’t absorb too much water.
The shoes, however, were more of a problem. Since it takes a bit of time to put them on and take them off, and since your hands might be clean-ish or very dirty, you don’t really want to touch your shoes. But crossing the high waters with these shoes was a bad idea: the increase in weight is substantial and your knees tire more. Today, my right knee was indeed starting to let go at the end of the way back. Plus, they are not easy to wash, and I believe that horse poo sticks more than the mud…
