Blogs from Parque Nacional Tayrona, Santa Marta, Colombia, South America

Having not seen much Caribbean Sea in and around Cartagena we were looking forward to experiencing this part of Colombia and where better than Tayrona national park. Tayrona is named after three indigenous tribes that were grouped together and called the Tayrones - they include the Koguis, the Wiwas and the Arawaks. The whole northern coast was pretty much no man’s land up until a decade ago. Owned and managed by the paramilitary and drug lords, you wouldn’t step foot here unless you were a Tayrona or a coca farmer. As part of the peace truce and cleaning up Colombia, the coca plantations were replaced with banana plantations and land was made available to buy. We met a lot of people escaping the madness of Bogotá or Cartagena for the tranquility and isolation of the jungle ... read more

This our 100th blog!!! Thank you everybody for reading and following our adventures. We hope you still enjoy reading them as much as we love sharing them. Some countries more than others are known for having the perfect beaches; for the relaxing, unwinding and admiring the pure beauty of their idyllic setting. The ones that spring to mind include the picture perfect beaches of Mexico, Maldives, Spain, Brazil, Jamaica, Philippines and Australia. All known for their outstanding sandy beaches and crystal clear waters. All in their own way offering their own slice of paradise. When looking into our very last minute trip to Colombia, we read many posts highly recommending travel in Colombia but noting that if you were looking for a beach paradise then you should look elsewhere. That’s okay we thought to ourselves, our ... read more

At breakfast today in my Santa Marta hotel met two older American women who were travelling together, without husbands. They were a bit smug when they found out I was going with a tour to the park as they had taken a 'collectivo', (small bus), that is until they discovered how little I had paid! It's easy to succumb to this mentality, that using anything other than public transport is cheating: why take a taxi when you can spend hours walking and waiting for buses? Well, because it's exhausting and wastes precious time, that's why. Have decided the trick is to do some trips on public transport just to prove you can and for the other trips do whatever makes best use of your time! In any case in the hierarchy of independent travellers I reckon ... read more

After a not-so-good sleep, we got up and headed out to catch the bus to Tayrona. We grabbed a street breakfast on the way to bus. I don't remember what we had, but it was probably bunelos. At the bus stop, the first one was full, but they come every fifteen minutes so we caught the next one, and we were at park gate an hour later. Thanks to our hammock reservation, we got to skip the line at the park entrance. The trip into the park starts with a short 1-2km walk along a road to the start of the trail, so we elected to take the van shuttle to save some time. It was about an hour and a half walk through some beautiful scenery to our hammocks in Arrecifes. We passed by lots ... read more