Coooolumbia!

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After 4 days with no shower, sleeping vertically in a half reclining bus seat on a bus full of noisy but funny Peruvians (due to their ignorance of what classifies as being rude i.e. if you want to put a movie on you just shout out Pelicula at the top of your lungs until the bus driver gets the message), hitting a cow and eating nothing but fried chicken and rice at various service staions accross the Peru, Ecuador and Columbia we made it to the Carribean Coast of Columbia - first stop Santa Marta.

We had a quick two nights at a local hostel (La Brisa Loca) run by a lovely American guy, managed to celebrate the end of our 4 day journey a little too hard on the night we arrived (this involved Nicole having a shot known in Columbia as a big fat dick - it involves wearing a helmet and a large piece of wood at the end which has big fat dick written on it). I´m sure you can imagine.

Santa Marta was ok, it´s got about 400 000 people and at the moment they have the Easter Celebrations going on big time and all Columbians have a week off work so it was pretty busy. We had a lovely long dip in the warm Carribean Sea, checked out some markets, a couple of brilliant dinners at the Mexican restaurant below our hostel which were great. Apart from that not much else was happening so on Sunday morning we decided it was time to leave for the ´mucho tranquillo´ waters of Taganga. Taganga is described in the lonely planet as a small fishing village that doesn´t know what has hit it. It´s probably the most accurate description the lonely planet has ever come up with.

We arrived Tuesday morning and have checked into a great little hostel with hammocks on balconies overlooking the Carribean sea. First stop laundry, second stop the beach. We got to the main part of the beach - had a freshly whizzed fruit juice and bought an inflatable donut - jumped on a boat and took about a five minute boat ride to a beach around the corner basically. Think arid brown mountains on both sides of the sea, trees on the beach shading the rainbow coloured beach chairs, ladies balancing biscuits and fruits for sale on their heads, men with eskys full of Ceviche, drunk Columbians enjoying the sunny weather - really cool. We cut a deal with a lady who greeted us of the boat - we could use her beach chairs for 3 mil pesos each ($1.50) but we had to have lunch there. I went in to ask for the lunch menu and the lady returned with a plate of fresh fish i.e the menu. Hilarious!

That afternoon we visited Octopus Dive Centre and booked ourselves in to get our dive tickets. We started doing the Open Water Dive Course on Monday and loved it so much we dived for 6 days straight and now have our Advanced Open Water Dive Certification - how cool hey! We dive in the Tyrona NP which is only about 5mins by boat from Taganga. The diving here is not really reknowned for being anything super special but when you have never really seen underwater life it really is all amazing; all the colours of the coral and angel fish, moray eels, squid, jellyfish just to name a few. We even saw sea turtles which was a massive highlight - they are so graceful. Our instructor David and the whole dive centre crew have been absolutely fantastic (Octopus Dive Centre Taganga). It´s like a home away from home. We finished off our course yesterday with deep diving to 30m and a night dive - very scary. The deep diving is great but by 30m you start to get what they call the Martini effect, it´s like you are drunk, I couldn´t stop giggling - at nothing. Highlight of the night dive; at one point you turn off your light and just sit in the dark playing with the glittering phosphorous at the bottom of the ocean. Amazing!

Happy Easter!

XXXX

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Comments

[Georgie]

viva!
sounds like my kind of week Kelly Thompson! Am sitting in a multi-storey supermall in Hong Kong having a coffee, looking at the skyscrapers and thinking of you. Miss you, love you, see you soon(ish..maybe??!)