Vanilla Sky and Stomach Problems

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Hiking through the jungle, white sand beaches, stomach problems, nomads, hippies, vanilla skies and lightning storms..i.e. my first encounter of one of Colombia's biggest natural attractions: Parque Nacional Tayrona. I knew about Colombia's natural beauty, I heard of Parque Tayrona but I didn't have any idea of what to really expect. First off Tayrona park is enormous. I only spent one night there when usually people spend at least 4-5 days. So, I'm sure I'll me making another visit again. The journey starts with a short road trip east of Santa Marta with my new friends Antonio, Diego, Kathy and her 4 year old son Salva. This time of year Santa Marta is a sweltering hot zone where the humidity and heat gets the best of you but as soon as you go east you notice a drastic change as you head into higher elevation through the mountains. We make it to the entrance and start our 40 minute hike through the jungle where we encounter our first beach. Here the water is rough so it's not the best idea unless you are a professional swimmer to get in the water, so we head more east. Unfortunately for me my stomach starts acting up since this is during my first week in Colombia and I'm getting used to food, heat, etc. I suck it up though and we continue our treak through hills and slopes. Finally we reach our destination: hippie central. Foreigners from all over the place set up camp some I imagine staying there for months. It reminds me a bit like the movie "The Beach" without all of the anarchy and the weird Leonardo DiCaprio video game part. So, we set up our camp in off area on a small hill off the beach where there two levels with about 20 hammocks on each level. The day flies by and before you know it the sky is now vanilla for about 45 minutes before the sun sets around 6:00 pm. We get comfortable and in about an hour later we're in the midst of a crazy lightning storms that lasts for about 8 hours straight. We lay around listening to people playing"Creep" by Radiohead, "Wonderwall" by Oasis, "Under the Bridge" by Red Hot Chilli Peppers amonst many others. Baring in mind that we have a 4 year old with us and the fact that my stomach is making strange loud noises all night we end up crashing early. In the middle of the night I swear that I feel a lizard drop on my face wiggling around and run away but I have no evidence. I get made fun of and freak Kathy out who is terrified of lizards. The next day begins early...we trek around the beach for a good portion of the day checking out stunning views of our environment before making our way back through the jungle and to Santa Marta..sweating profusely the entire way. Some of you might be thinking...Adam that happend over a month and a half ago, what else have you been doing? Lesson planning, writing tests, getting to know 120 students first, second and last names are 3 answers that come to mind the quickest. I'll go into details in the next chapter. Until then chau. Mr. Adam needs to wake up at 5:20 a.m. tomorow morning...

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