---

After camping a few days in Tayrona, we decided to head for some luxury. We grabbed a motorcycle and rode to Los Naranjos on the outskirts of the park. We arrived at a hotel overlooking the ocean where is meets the Rio Piedras. The hotel is called Barlovento and is where Rich's cousin had stayed several months before. It's a private home that jets out over a cliff and has open air beds that look onto the ocean. It also has one of the best toilet views ever imagined... see pics! Sleeping here was amazing listening to the waves crash onto the shore... even though I was afraid of rolling out of bed and off the platform onto the beach below... unlikely, but that's just me!

We arrive without a reservation and find no rooms available. The kind host lady allowed us to sleep in the common area and gave us some beds. Lucky!

We spend the day strolling the beach and relaxing on the hammocks. We also walked up the Rio Piedras and floated on our backs down the river to where it meets the ocean. We saw lots of birds - parrots, cranes, vultures... We had an amazing dinner and ended the evening with some rum provided by a French couple who lives in Bogota vacationing at the hotel.

The next day we continue our river "surfing" and building in the sand. In the afternoon the hotel hosted some organizers from the FIFA under 20 tournament that Colombia was hosting. I had some interesting conversations with some of the organizers. Later in the afternoon our motorcycle driver picked us up and dropped us off to catch the bus for Riohacha and the start of another adventure to the most northern tip of South America!

---