Searching for the lesser travelled Carribean coast: in and around Tolu

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After Cartagena we decided to head West; this meant opting out of visiting the popular spots of Santa Marta and the Tyrona national park, but we were in search of something tranquil and cheap and after some internet searching and a few golden bits of advice, we decided to go to Tolu. Tolu is a little town on the coast with stretches of beaches to Covenas and other villages that are popular with Colombian tourists, but werent even mentioned in our guide books...we found ourselves wondering why because the area has so much to offer.

We found a lovely place to stay in Tolu, at Villa Babilla, with a balcony, hammocks on the roof and a big outdoor kitchen. So weve spent many days cycling to the nearby beaches and eating icecreams. The town feels Colombian in every way, with lively music blasting from speakers on the weekend, the school children having their PE lessons in the Plaza and the fishermen on the piers. The best thing is you can walk 15 minutes to a secluded beach that you have completely to yourself.

One of the local attractions in nearby San Antero is a mud volcano, again we had it completely to ourselves, perhaps because not everyone wants to submerge themselves in what is essentially a pit of thick and gloopy mud! It was actually a lot of fun though, but unbelievably hard to wade through, it was so thick you could sit upright in it, as though you were in an armchair. Does our skin look smoother and younger...Im not so sure...but I was just pleased not to have to worry about getting sunburnt!

Another great highlight of our time in this area was the visit to the Isla Mucura, just an hour by boat from Tolu. It is a beautiful island, with mangroves, golden sands covered in palm trees and turquoise waters, which probably explains why one side of it has a flashy hotel on. However, when we arrived a local guy walked us to the other end of the island (which only takes about 10 minutes) where we found Dallandria; simple wooden huts on stilts for just 17 pounds a night. The island had a main beach which was lovely for swimming in and unlike Playa Blanca you were left in peace; no one approaching you selling massages or jewellery. However, the beaches near out hut were also beautiful and were scattered with huge and impressive shells; the kind that Disney would put alongside Aerial the mermaid.

Its the fist island ive visited on my whole trip that felt like everyday life was going on, not focussed on tourism; there is a small island community of just 120 people, so you walked through the village on the way to the main beach, watched fishermen at work and had pigs and goats running around the place. This also meant that we became acuainted with the children on the island; particularly when Stus juggling clubs and slack line came out. It was like a circus workshop and by the end, he must have walked the entire primary school of 26 children across the slack line.

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