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Published: September 4th 2013
Punta Gallinas
The most northerly point of the mighty South American continentSince leaving Cali, Erika and I had been looking forward hugely to meeting up again and we were able to engineer the best part of 3 weeks travelling together through some of the northern parts of Colombia that Erika had never been to. However, our first stop was a bit further afield with a trip to San Andres, a Colombian owned island in the Caribbean close to the coast of Nicaragua. Erika had arranged our accommodation, and wow what a place it was. On the top floor of a 5 story building, with us having one of the two rooms in the guesthouse with ocean views!! Incredible!
Our ocean views were of the atoll of Johnny Cay, and we visited this and another tiny island named Acuario on what must have been the world’s slowest launch! I think sea cucumbers were making more rapid progress to their destinations than we were, but the day was a lot of fun, wandering along beautiful sand bars and beaches, snorkelling, swimming and of course enjoying the requisite lunch of fresh fish, coconut rice, salad and fried plantain that would become our delicious staple!
After spending a few days exploring the San Andres’
nooks and crannies by bus, we managed to save the biggest highlight for last as we booked onto a manta ray snorkelling tour. We nearly didn’t make it as the tour left in the afternoon and we had spent the morning exploring. Suddenly, after watching buses pass by every 20 minutes, the time we needed ours we were waiting nearly an hour without luck. I stuck out my thumb more in hope than expectation but a kindly Colombian tourist on the world’s fastest golf cart answered our pleas and whisked us to our start point!
The snorkel tour passed first to a set of reefs, which while there was no vibrant coral, they were teeming with life including the “long, thin, ugly, angry fish” which may be better known as a moray eel. It seemed pretty aggressive and I was glad that my guide had borrowed my camera to try and take the photos. There was also a new experience for me as the captain let out a rope behind the boat and we all held on and were “towed” around the reef to enable us to see more!
The tour culminated in the shallows which the manta
rays call home, and like many of these nature type tours the animals aren’t stupid and know they are going to get a feed if they turn up on cue – which they did in their dozens!! Being that the manta rays are apparently passive creatures we were able to “cuddle” them – kind of leaning back slightly and wrapping your arms around them as they came up onto your chest. Passive they might have been – but after being shown the size of their teeth when they were feeding on the fish heads from the boat I wasn’t so sure!
It was a brilliant way to finish our time on the island, and will be one of my lasting memories – that and the fact that for the first time in my life I was able to walk to the airport to catch a flight!!
Our flights saw us end up in the coastal city of Santa Marta and from there we headed up into the mountains to a tiny place called Minca – famed for its beautiful sunsets as although it is nestled at 650 metres in altitude it is still close enough to the coast
to see the sea, and the fact it faces west means you enjoy uninterrupted views of the sunset with the shimmering lights of Santa Marta below. We got a bit unlucky with the weather so the sunsets were pleasant but not spectacular!!
The main highlight was a full day’s walking to the highest point in the area, Los Pinos, where the views were meant to be spectacular and the sunsets out of this world. We had heard such good things about the sunsets that I even considered booking us in there for a night – but I’m very glad we didn’t as after starting the day in clear weather on a tour of the excellent coffee finca “La Victoria” (a British founded coffee farm named after Queen Victoria and still using the original 120 year old technology) we started to ascend into a full day of rain-soaked, viewless walking!. We arrived at Los Pinos looking forward to a cosy lunch at the hostel only to find what amounted to little more than a big trekking hut with basic dorm rooms and no food or drink! Luckily, we had brought some snacks “just in case” so we laughed it off
thinking how lucky it was we hadn’t booked to stay there and had a surprisingly pleasant lunch looking out over a sea of grey nothingness!
On the way back down the rain continued, we stopped off at a set of waterfalls, and made it back safely to the hostal. I was very proud of Erika for making the trip with no problems – it was a tough day walking in the rain with no views as a reward and I was certainly exhausted by the end!!
The excellent Dreamers hostel in Santa Marta continued to be our base as we flitted from one place to another with the liberating feeling of only carrying a small backpack, given we were able to leave everything else at the hostel. Santa Marta wasn’t such a remarkable town – but one thing which will stick in my mind is that the drivers there seem to have the loudest horns in the world! I don’t know how they’ve done it but they seem to have cranked them up to rock concert levels, and of course having invested the time to do this they are obligated to use them every 5 seconds to create
Santa Marta’s personal, and very annoying, soundtrack!
We set off again, this time striking out east to try and get to the northernmost point in South America – Punta Gallinas. It was quite a long journey to get there and took us via cuatro vias (literally four routes) to change transport, which must have been one of the worst places in the world! Roads from Venezuela, the main Colombian port in that region, the interior and the principal highway to Santa Marta all meet there, and it’s a sea of rubbish, despair and goat slaughterings that we were glad to leave and get to Cabo de la Vela!
Popular with Colombian tourists, it seemed to underwhelm Erika and I, but perhaps we didn’t give it enough of a chance because on the day we arrived we bumped into a group of five tourists who needed an extra pair to make up the 7 spaces in a land cruiser that was leaving for Punta Gallinas at dawn the next morning - and all for the bargain price of COP 100,000 (£35) for the two day tour!
Erika and I jumped at the chance, as the rumours we had
View from our guesthouse window
The view is of Johnny Cay, an island we would visit. heard were that the trips would be much more expensive that this, or would leave infrequently meaning we would be hanging around in Cabo for a long time. I knew with such a bargain price corners would be cut, but we were willing to roll the dice and see what happened! Straight away we got our first demonstration of “deal creep” as the wily owner had found another two travellers to hop in so we were now 9! Obviously the price would be reduced accordingly to make up for the discomfort – no, not a chance of that!!
So intimately getting to know our fellow travellers we set off for a morning’s driving through increasingly impressive desert landscape tinged with glimpses of aquamarine Caribbean in the background. We took a launch over to Punta Gallinas and were soon bundled into the back of an open topped flatbed truck to start our tour of this ruggedly beautiful part of Colombia.
The first stop was the lighthouse at Punta Gallinas itself – a small rocky outcrop protruding into the Caribbean and signifying the final reach of the mighty South American continent. We continued driving through the barren landscapes, home to
less than a dozen of the local Wayuu families who survive as fisherman (and I guess some of them through tourism!), to reach a beautiful viewpoint out over the mangroves and Caribbean sea. The tour culminated at Playa Taroa, with our entrance being by running down a 5 storey sand dune that plunged directly into the sea. Here we had our first relaxing time, and it was wonderful to splash about in the sea with Erika with such a dramatic beach as a backdrop!
It was an action packed day, so after a brief pause we were out for our “sunset flamingo cruise” that we had negotiated earlier in the day and again been “deal crept”. After agreeing a private tour in the launch for a fixed price between the nine of us the owner conjured up another 4 guests from a different tour to make it not so private and a lot more cramped. Great we were thinking – dividing the fixed price between 13 of us rather than 9 will make it even cheaper. Not a jot of it, as the wily negotiator stuck to his guns and palmed the extra profit!!
The return to civilisation
Sunset in Minca
Although we didn't have perfect weather, it was still pleasant to watch! the next morning was even more hair raising as some overnight rain had left some sections of the track particularly boggy, and our driver’s “aggressive” style took its toll on the 4x4, which started to drink water like a camel (everyone had to give up their drinking water to pour into the radiator) and then threw in a puncture for good measure! However, after a long day on the road we made it together to Palomino to relax and catch up on sleep after a tough, exhilarating and slighty fly by the seat of your pants tour!
The next morning we were lucky with the weather for once, and were able to see the view for which Palomino is famed – on a clear day you can stand on the beach and see the snow capped peak of Pico Bolivar – the highest point of the world’s highest coastal mountain range at 5,700 metres. It was an impressive view, especially when combined with the fact that in one vista I was able to see: beach, palms, bamboo, platano, jungle and mountains! A nice snapshot of my nearly four months in the country!
Recovered from our trip, we got
back outdoors for a day involving a hike through the jungle to an indigenous family, lunch with them and then a supremely relaxing return journey of tubing down the river back to Palomino!! This makes it all sound far more well organised than it was, as what actually happened was we bumped into a Colombian hippy who seemed like a nice guy, and had done the same tour with another group that day who gave him a glowing recommendation so we thought we’d give it a go!
The walk was pleasant, and we’d bought all the food in Palomino to be able to cook for the indigenous family as a thank you for their hospitality. It was a nice experience with the family, but for some reason it didn’t blow me away as perhaps it should have, as it was a pretty unique opportunity to do something that didn’t have any sort of veneer of tourism attached to it.
We continued eastwards to Colombia’s most romantic city Cartagena, most famous for its 11km plus of city walls. They were beautifully preserved and for Erika and I it was a pleasure to wander along and over – both for
Pozo Azul (Blue Pool)
The water was obviously freezing! the views, the sense of history and the fact that the sea breeze was wonderfully cooling compared to the impressive heat within the narrow colonial streets. Construction started in the late sixteenth century, in order to repel attacks from buccaneers such as Sir Francis Drake who had taken the city in 1586. Such a good job was done that Cartagena was never again ransacked.
However, Cartagena really was a tale of two cities, with massive inequalities between the huge number of poor inhabitants and the wealthier, glitzier areas – something most evident on the long trip to the bus station, passing through a lot of the poorest neighbourhoods.
After our wandering the city by day we managed (eventually!) to sample some of Cartagena’s equally famous nightlife at an achingly cool Cuban salsa bar called Havana, which had a live salsa band, and boasted past guests such as Hilary Clinton! (
http://cafehavanacartagena.com/). The music and atmosphere was superb and I was pleased to find that I hadn’t forgotten my salsa “moves” even though they were perhaps a little rusty!
Our trip finished in the Colombian resort town of Tolu, and managed to snare a fantastic room in Villa Babilla
to round off the trip (
http://villababillahostel.com/). Tolu was a strange little town, where the locals seemed to be passionate about two things - bicycles and incredibly loud music. Obviously, some bright sparks had found a way to combine the two and so ploughing up and down the shorefront were “party bikes”: pedal powered moving sound-systems able to accommodate 10 or so people where tipsy punters cycled their way around town each trying to deafen more passers-by than the last with their terrible mix of Reggaeton and Meringue!!
But the real highlight of Tolu was our trip to the Islands of San Bernardo. We visited several islands in the day, including a nature reserve where one of the crew members gave us a fantastic private tour of the island, (I feel it may have been Erika’s charm rather than my own that got us that!!). Erika also made friends with some of the Simian wildlife and we cruised past Santa Cruz one of the most densely populated islands in the world, where roughly 1,200 people live in a shanty town covering every square inch of a tiny island eeking out their lives as fishermen.
The final island was beautiful
and being our last day together we splashed out and upgraded our lunch to a delicious lobster to celebrate! Post lunch we were some of the few tourists to actually explore the island and having followed the booming bass of the local’s music, we arrived at a small bar where that was selling ice cold beer for half the price of the tourist beach!! We then stopped at a tiny private little cove away from the crowds and enjoyed the great weather and blue waters as our final full day together drew to a close.
It had been a wonderful few weeks of travel – to visit such amazing places with such a special person has been a real privilege, and I look forward to many more adventures together in the future!
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