As a culmination to our two week long holiday break, myself and seven other volunteers journeyed to Parque Tayrona, a national park in Colombia with world-famous beaches and gorgeous scenery. Cobbling as much information as we could from the internet and our Lonely Planets, we jumped on the Berlina Line bus and headed off to Santa Marta, which is two hours north of Barranquilla, and then traveled another hour north past Taganga to the entrance to the park.
From the entrance to the park, a one hour trek into the wilderness takes you to the first beach, Arreicifes. (if you ever decide to go to this park, just make sure you take the right path, instead of heading left along the horse path…having gone left, rather than experiencing the beautiful tourist route we discovered the way back, we managed to hike into the park on the packhorse path, aka through gullies and mounds of horse crap…but just being in nature was pretty hard to beat!)
The beach at Arreicifes is surrounded by campgrounds, but it is too dangerous to swim at, and we had other goals—the beach Cabo San Juan del Guia. To get here we continued walking along the beautiful shore line for another hour, past “La Piscina,” the first swimming beach, and then on to Cabo, a campsite with an amazing swimmable beach as well.
Immediately sucked in by this gorgeous view:
We decided we’d like nothing more than to stay in hammocks in this beautiful gazebo. Exulting in our good luck at getting the last eight hammocks, we soon learned that despite all our knowledge, there was a crucial information gap: turns out, this gazebo was FREEZING come sundown. Huddled in our few layers (read: shorts, a short sleeve shirt, and a tshirt), we endured the winds and were rocked into a semi-sleep to the sound of crashing waves.
Abby (see above) and I may have done some early-morning hammock sharing to avoid hypothermia …and when the sun rose we all agreed that although the feeling of such cold was perhaps priceless in this land of crazy-ridiculous heat, and to have slept in so much splendor was a “good experience,” we’d move to the more plebian location of beach-hammocks the next night.
After thawing out on the beautiful beach, we trekked up the mountainside to Pueblito, a small site of ruins where an indigenous tribe once lived after escaping the Spanish conquistadors:
(250 terraces, where about 2000 people lived around 450-1600 AD)
New Year’s Eve came with fun and lots of foreign friends. Because it’s a family-oriented holiday here in Colombia, the beach was less crowded than expected, but still hopping with foreigners from all over the globe. For the first time in two days, the sounds of Colombian music filled the air and with this familiar soundtrack we danced on the beach under the stars well into the morning.
We also found out slightly tardily that the buses in Colombia apparently shut down for New Years, so instead of returning home on Sunday as planned, we received an unexpected extension to our trip. Though we’d run out of food (we’d splurged on such things as peanutbutter and apples!!...but those were long gone), it was hard to regret the extra pesos we spent on supplies since during the whole next day we recuperated with long swims (and naps) on the gorgeous surrounding beaches.
Arriving back at Arreceifes that night, we spent the night in relative luxury: hammocks with mosquito netting! This area is where many ritzy folk stay, of the type who pack in roller-suitcases on horseback and apply fresh makeup and (gasp) shower every day! There were plenty of places for them, too, from gorgeous cabanas to hotel-type buildings, to those who “roughed” it in luxury tents and blowup mattresses.
Among some of the other visitors included two American guys on vacation, who were spending a couple weeks down in Colombia as a respite from their corporate jobs. They didn’t speak Spanish, so in return for us helping them order beers, we got to include a few cervezas in that order for ourselves… They also were gracious enough to feed us their unwanted food, like blackberry-sauced plantains, which to us were incredibly delicious…although by their bemused faces it was clear that by our wanton ravenous behavior we were reinforcing whatever you corporate folks think of us peace corps hippies…and yet, after a few days hiking in the brush, we surely weren’t going to turn down any free food! The irony of course is that we were returning from the park to live in cities bigger than theirs…
We found the tourist trail on the hike back. So, between that and the few days we were there, here are some beautiful pictures. In Parque Tayrona, it sort of went: turn around, pick up your camera, take a picture of something gorgeous, swivel and repeat. So if the following picture display is excessive, I apologize…but for us Peace Corps hippies languishing in the concrete jungle of Barranquilla, this was possibly the most amazing weekend had yet!
View from some rocks I climbed up:
Flock of cranes flying past the gazebo:
Path between some of the beaches:
Cranes overhead:
Sun begins to set:
It's not photshopped, I swear:
Sunset in Arreceifes:
Beach flower
View from the tourist trail:
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