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Published: December 4th 2008
Playa Blanca, Taganga
Don't be fooled. It's a tennis court.And so, with a HUUUUUGE sigh of relief, and the knowledge that we were entering our 18th and final country of this trip, we eased quietly into Colombia. And as we sat on our small and quiet bus, trundling its way slowly across the very top of South America towards Santa Marta, the chaos and anxieties of Venezuela evaporated slowly from our minds, as the beads of sweat also evaporated from our foreheads under the welcome aircon.
It had been a while since we'd taken a bus anywhere, having flown for freedom out of Venezuela, and the pint-sized Colombian coach had an air of Postman Pat about it as it rolled up and down hills and around corners, along a smooth road with lines and everything - a sure sign that we'd arrived in place that felt looked after.
A word to the parents, if you'll be so kind. Colombia isn't what you think. In fact it's probably the opposite of what you think. The press it gets abroad is about 10 years out of date and these days, on the surface at least, it's a joy for the traveller. There's a massive security presence - a good thing
Happy Hot Christmas
Decorations in Santa Marta. - making the roads safe to travel during the day. And the people are the kind of people that make travelling so fun. Smiley, chirpy, welcoming and jokey - and it's all genuine. Here the banter's for the sake of banter, not because people want to sell you something. And they've got charm by the bucket load. Quite how two neighbouring countries can be so utterly different is perplexing, but within an hour of arriving in Colombia, the heavy atmosphere and grubby streets had given way to an altogether lighter and cleaner ambience.
We arrived in Santa Marta and straight away headed to Taganga, a small fishing village nearby. We found ourselves a hostel called Divanga. Divanga in Taganga - we figured that if we remembered one we'd remember the other and have less chance of getting lost. And as far as we can tell it worked. Although maybe we failed to get lost because we were in a small village. Who knows? But it seemed a faultless plan at the time. Now, Taganga's got a great reputation, and it is, indeed a lovely place, but its one failing...and I know this is nitpicking but mum always told me
The Fun Bus
Wouldn't catch this on the Pennines. that honesty is a virtue...but to be brutal, and it's something the arriving traveller can't fail to notice...Taganga's beach is not golden or sandy. It's more gravelly. In fact it's like one of those municipal tennis courts that's a little bit gravelly and a little bit, well, car parky. That's all. Apart from that, Taganga's lovely. So lovely that the tie-dye crowd have all found it with their pilons of dreadlocks mounted high on their heads and their little half-naked children raised on a diet of hummus and ganga fumes. So there's no shortage of 'artesian' jewellery, if you're into that. And once you've weighed down your ankles with hemp bracelets and toe rings, you can lie on the beach and contemplate the unusualness of beaches that look like municipal tennis courts.
Although we didn't know it at the time of our arrival, Taganga would be our base for the best part of two weeks. We'd freed up a bit of time by running away from Venezuela like a pair of pansies, allowing us to put the brakes on a bit and take in the scenery in Colombia. So first things first, a day at the beach. Marvellous. There
Pulling One Off
Most people push vehicles out of ditches. So did we when the ingenious plan of pulling didn't work. was another, nicer beach round the corner from Taganga and the setting was lovely, the water warm and clear, and the beach....well another tennis court. But gave us the chance to use Jenny's exciting new birthday present, a mask and snorkel, which contrived to almost drown Ant within about five minutes and although they are still travelling with us at the bottom of some bag, they have been consigned to the 'useless presents' bin. Sadly, Jenny never got to use her present and will have to wait a whole year from anything nearly as exciting to come her way.
But as you all know by now, with us, excitement and danger are never far away and it doesn´t take us long to sniff them out. It had always been our plan to go to the Cuidad Perdida (Lost City), during our time ooop north (as the Colombians call it). Now, if you believe everything you read - especially the embassy websites of Britain or Australia, this trek is an absolute no-go. It's swarming with guerrillas and if you don't get kidnapped by FARC and held for an obscene ransom, you'll fall into the hands of the cocaine making mafia
Tayrona Kid
Minding his own. who will murder you immediately, just to see the look on your face. However, if you speak to the local people and take the advice of guidebooks, you will probably be perfectly fine and have a seriously enjoyable six day trek. We're not stupid, we know that Colombia's problems haven't disappeared over night, but we also knew that tour groups have been safely going to the Cuidad Perida since 2003 (and unsafely for a few years before then. Ahem.) And so we joined up with a group of six others, all of us feeling like members of a SWAT team about to head into an unknown but perilous jungle where fear would rustle from the tips of leaves and horror would flow like blood down wild rivers. What we felt like and what we looked like however, were two entirely different things, especially when our transport arrived. Instead of a hard-arse 4x4 with gun turrets and bullet holes, we got the fun bus: an open sided, brightly painted joke of a machine which looked like it should be used to transport three year olds to Legoland. Sheepishly we climbed on, hoping no one would see us, but everyone did see
Jenny Jones
Getting a helping hand from Omar. us since the driver knew everyone and spent the morning taking us on a tour of tyre fitters in the Santa Marta and outer Santa Marta region. Not having a copy of the itinerary with us, none of us could remember if Day One included such a thorough tour of tyre fitters but we were reassured that we were probably amongst the first tourists to get such an elaborate insight into an industry which is largely overlooked in the tourist agenda. Some time after lunch time, we left the main road for a dirt road and rather predictably spent much of the next two hours pushing and pulling our inappropriate ride out of various puddles. At one stage, all the boys found themselves clinging onto the left side of the fun bus to prevent it tipping onto its right side. As we clung, weighing up the gruesome outcomes should the fun bus tip either left or right, we noted that the only deciding factor in this precarious situation would be the bulk of the driver. Had he stepped out of the vehicle, the five of us would have been flung, cartoon-like, over the trees and into oblivion, landing in a
Scran
Jen getting her scran from Gabriel's brilliant river table. puff of dust somewhere far away. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at the start of the trek, we were keen to get going.
The trick with this trek is to walk in the mornings and arrive at camp before the afternoon rain sets in. And so setting off at 3.30pm wasn't ideal. Still, we expected to get wet and to this day this is the only trek we've done where the majority of people wore swimming gear the whole way. We got about an hour in before the rain kicked in. By that stage we'd got most of the way up a massive hill and were soaked from sweat already. Still, the feeling of raindrops which actually hurt when they strike your neck is a sign that things are going to get soggy and sure enough, in the fading light, we squelched into shin-deep holes and quickly took on the appearance of battle-hardened troops. And it was only day one. We arrived well after dark, having negotiated (by luck more than judgement) some sodden slopes which would have been perilous had it been light. And by the time we bedded down, we already felt like we´d
Staircase
Very little steps, but lots of them. From this we can deduce that old civilizations in South America all had small feet and tight buns. been well and truly inducted into the walk.
The Cuidad Perdida trek has a bit of a reputation for being a toughie, but it's not so bad. Challenging in places, very up and down, and wet, but then you only walk for four hours a day and then sit and watch the rain for the afternoon. It's not that bad. In fact it gave us time to reflect on the superb cooking of our guide and porter, Omar and Gabriel, whose helpfulness and charm really brightened the trip. It also meant we had time to take in the scenery, breathtaking at times, and the local Tayrona people - probably the coolest indigenous people in the world with their all-white smocks and long black hair. On day three in which we scrambled along a cliff then crossed the same river nine times, (without any wincing from these two battle-hardened adventurers) we lunched at spot on the river, unaware of the Indiana Jones-like entrance to the city lurking in the trees. Then after lunch, as we walked towards a muddy bank and apparently nothing else, it became apparent that hiding in the trees was the moss-covered staircase leading to the lost
city. It didn't even need our guide to be carrying a flaming torch or to walk into a wall of cobwebs - it was cool enough. The stairs ascended up into the distance, then further and further up still - 1,700 in total - until finally we emerged in a clearing where we saw the first signs of the lost city. As far as entrances go, this one couldn't have been scripted better.
Not being lost anymore, it's still not particularly found either, and the only people waiting for us at the top of the steps were the young soldiers whose job it is to keep the guerrillas away from the site. The poor lads are bored out of their minds and their only entertainment is when a group of tourists arrive, which makes them very friendly and chatty, especially if there are blonde girls in the group. Apart from them, we were the only ones there, a sign that tourism is still slow in Colombia as if this were Peru or Ecuador, there would be dozens more people.
And so we did what we had got used to doing...sat and watched the rain. Nothing had dried since
Tayrona Village
Built by McAlpine, these are quite cheap, but check the fittings. day one, but we'd got used to that already and managed to pass a long afternoon looking out across the lost city but unable to walk around it, and waiting for a break in the rain where we would all rush to the clothes line and hang our soggy smalls, only to rush back out ten minutes later when the rain came pouring back down. It was the following day that we got to look around the site, which was impressive in its scale and surroundings, but not as exciting as the walk itself. But that didn't matter. We'd known that the walk would be the highlight and so it was again when we returned, covering the first three days ground in two. We all learnt how, up or down, a soggy, pot-holed hill is a bugger and a half, and Jenny (bless her) learnt that that's especially the case when the pothole has just been topped up with horse piss and then filled with one's own foot. Still, there was plenty of water around to wash the foot.
At lunchtime on day six we returned from whence we came, knowing that our ride, the infamous fun bus, would
Cuidad Perdida
All neat and polished. be stuck in a ditch some way away from us. Sure enough it was, and we were relieved to get a lift in a far more appropriate vehicle back to the bus, into which we sheepishly climbed, shagged out and in need of a wash, and hoping that whatever tyre-related issues the driver needed to address could wait for another day.
But the thing about being shagged out after a long old trek is that things never go smoothly. And even though the fun bus got us back to town, it even took us to Taganga, we had a minor disappointment in store for us, which in the circumstances, felt like a major one. Our reservation had disappeared and there was no room at the inn. Or, as it became clear later, there was room at the inn, but the guy behind the counter was a bit slow in spotting it. It was like bursting for a pee and rushing for a toilet, only to find that the toilet's locked. You can't go but your pee doesn't know that and so a bit comes out of its own accord. All we wanted was to get into that room and
Tucan (play that game, aaaahm playin')
There is never, ever an excuse to make Bobby Brown puns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyXqqfijQUc scrub our dirty bodies until the mud came off, but we were denied at the very last hurdle. It came as little comfort to be taken to a mosquito ridden room down the road - but we got our shower and ate some food, then we drunk some wine and the world seemed like a better place.
We got our room in Divanga, and when we learnt that we could have had it the previous night, we were able to laugh it off, having had a good night's sleep. The thing was that we couldn’t stay mad for long as it was such a nice hostel. They had a pool and good coffee and a young barman called Edwin whose smile lit up the place. And so we stayed there for another week. We weren't just being lazy, but we were being a bit lazy. We'd decided to take some more Spanish lessons, more as a last gasp attempt to make ourselves understood than to polish off our skills. And so that kept us occupied for half the time, making us feel less like couch potatoes than our otherwise lazy days implied. If it weren't for the Spanish lessons
Leg It!!
Jen makes like Paula Radcliffe in an attempt to avoid a mud splattering on the way back from the Lost City. we might have completely forgotten where we were, given that we flitted from pool to book and back to pool, then finished off with a cocktail. We were handed a small reminder where we were one night, when in a bar, Ant was ordering a drink when a customer came in and nonchalantly pulled a
massive revolver out from his trousers and handed it over to the barman. Playing it cool as ever, Ant laughed out loud and pointed the gun out to everyone in the bar. Smiling with delight at such a sign of outlawishness, one friend pointed out the obvious: 'Well, we are in Colombia.'
Alas, the excitement subsided when the rain arrived. Poolside fever became cabin fever and the only thing that entertained us in the end was a rather bizarre incident in which we went looking for a 'missing' girl at nine in the morning. Why we didn't leave it until later and not get the police involved is anyone's guess. Needless to say, like the city, she wasn't lost at all but had been out having fun, and rolled back in oblivious to the commotion that had preceded her return. And we all felt
Guitar George...He Knows All The Chords
His name's Rolando and he played at Divanga one night. a bit stupid.
It was a sign that we should leave....and we did, only to find that when we checked out our room rate had mysteriously increased. Naughty...especially when the person on the desk claimed they had told us, which definitely wasn´t the case! And so, equipped with a bit more of a grasp of the Spanish language, we headed once more out of town, though not very far. In fact, we just went back to near the Lost City, to the Tayrona National Park, in search of beaches that weren't tennis courts. We weren't disappointed, even though Ant made Jen walk all the way from the main road (1 hour) rather than grab a lift (10 minutes). Still, the good thing about arguing is it's flexible - you can do it anywhere! Jen's hump subsided at the sight of a dying horse which had lost its footing and slipped into a gully. It had been left to die by the owners, but had miraculously disappeared the following day when we went back. For a while we stood and pondered a rescue operation, but we knew there was nothing much we could do, short of get a soldier to
Jet Pack Donkey
Ever seen a donkey wearing a jet pack? You have now! use his gun to put it out of its misery. (Although I'm not sure the touch of a gun against my forelock would make me any less miserable than dying quietly). We comforted it (or comforted ourselves) leaving it, in all probability, with a final image of a very sweaty Ant and a very concerned Jenny, interrupting the flow of its life flashing before its eyes.
Some time and a lot of sweat later, we arrived at a beach which was being ferociously beaten about the ankles by a boisterous sea. Between us and it was a sign announcing the vast number of people who had been killed swimming there, and taking note, we gingerly tip toed along the highest point of the beach, hoping the sea wouldn't notice us and gobble us up. The scenery was stunning, with proper beaches to our right and forested hills to our left, but the sea was certainly wild and thus less inviting. We were heading for a place four beaches down which sounded like a quiet little hideaway, and as we made our way there, allowed ourselves to dream of a tropical paradise, all deserted and lonely. Bugger. It was like
Our Gaff
This is where we stayed in Taryona NP. In the top bit. It's like where Harry Potter met Hagrid. a summer camp. Lovely spot, but apparently about 100 other people knew about it too and were busy camping and playing volleyball when we arrived. Still, we did manage to wheedle out the most exclusive spot - a cabin built high on a rock at the end of a spit of land - on account of being the only people there willing to pay our way into solitude. And it was worth it. Surrounded by sea and with our very own balcony, we were able to watch the rain arrive in all its glory and soak the whole bay. Ah well, at least we stayed dry.
We're not sure what it is about us, but we do have a habit of bringing rain, especially to beaches. And so the following day, when it didn't look like clearing up, we cleared out. We decided it was time to head along the coast and see a bit more of Colombia. Of course, an hour later the sun had come out and we had second thoughts. But after a brief spell long enough to send Ant's stomach an unusual shade of pink, we continued. We passed the mysteriously disappeared 'dead' horse, and
Tayrona Person
Traditionally, they don't always wear giant woks on their heads. They usually wear hats. boarded with some trepidation a bus, which came from the same family as the fun bus. But it delivered us to Santa Marta in time to witness a flood of biblical proportions, before packing our bags for the hugely anticipated city of Cartagena. Colombia's historic jewel awaited us, whilst Ant's hectic bowels awaited it.
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Chris
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Miguel the barman
"They had a pool and good coffee and a young barman called Miguel whose smile lit up the place." Well, I guess if you had called him Miguel a couple of times, the smile could possibly have frozen. That is, unless you had a different barmen then I did. :P (btw. Edwin is the name of the guy)