Santa Marta, Parque Tayrona & Minca (Weeks 8 & 9)

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After the world championship, a few of us had some extra time to travel around. I flew with Ena, Olly, Louis, Bobby and his girlfriend Elly to Santa Marta on the Caribbean Coast for some relaxation and diving. We had a bit of trouble at the Santa Marta airport when both Ena and my bags didn't show up. But luckily, we were picked up by Cata from the diving company, and she was able to help us sort everything out. The bags were still at Bogota airport and they arrived at our hostel later that night. We stayed in Rodadero, which is the smaller beach town 10 mins down the coast from Santa Marta. We spent the next couple of days diving in the amazing reefs of Parque Tayrona. I was doing my Open Water certification, and the others were doing fun dives, so we were separate during the dives but we went out together in the boat. I fell in love with diving instantly. For the certification, I had to do some skills, including recovering the regulator, taking off my mask and the Scuba gear under water, buoyancy techniques and navigation with a compass. All together I did 6 dives over the three days. The others also went for a night dive, which I wasn't allowed to do until I had completed the course. The others started to leave after about 3 or 4 days, and eventually I was on my own, for really the first time since arriving in South America. After I finished all the exams for the Open Water Certificate, I had a few beers in celebration with Cata and the people at the hostel. This turned in to a few cocktails during happy hour and ended with some tequila shots, which turned out to be closer to cups of tequila (this is where I learnt that the shots in Colombia are about 3 times the size of Australian shots). The next day, after a fairly slow morning, I caught a taxi to Parque Tayrona with an English brother and sister from the hostel.

Parque Tayrona is a beautiful national park of jungle and beaches. I ended up doing the long hike to a little traditional village in the middle of the park, called Pueblito (which means "little town") with some Mexicans from my hostel, Edith and Fernando. The hike went uphill from the road near our hostel to Pueblito and then down to the main beach of Tayrona Park - Cabo San Juan del Guia. Climbing up was fairly straight forward, if tiring, but during the descent, we had to climb over a bunch of huge boulders and go through some random, unmarked caves. It was a bit of an adventure, but I'm glad that we were going down rather than up! This part of the trek took about 4 hours, and then we could jump into the beautiful water at the beach, which was lovely after the half day slog in tropical heat. We then continued along the trail that follows the beaches to the park exit, taking a dip in La Piscina and other beaches along the way. The next day I went tubing in a river a little way past the park that took us to a secluded beach which was nice and relaxing. I stopped off at another beach on the way back and got a lift to the hostel from a nice couple from Medellin.

The next day I caught the bus back to Santa Marta and started my Advanced Diving course, which included a deep dive to 100ft where the effects of nitrogen narcosis can start to be felt, advanced buoyancy which involved swimming through hoops and doing flips underwater, advanced navigation in squares and triangles and a night dive. The night dive was so awesome - the anemones, lobsters and soldier fish were out and about in the open and there were some sleeping fish just chilling out in the water. The coolest thing was when we all turned our lights off and waved our arms around - the bio-luminescent plankton lights up all around you like you're floating through space.. really amazing!

After the advanced course, I spent a couple of nights in Minca - a small town about 45mins from Santa Marta. Minca is a popular little get away when you're in Santa Marta - it's a little cooler and has a number of nice waterfalls and swimming pools in the jungle. To get to my hostel, you had to climb up a steep trail leading from the town. Luckily, I'd left my big pack in the hostel in Rodadero, but some people did the hike with their whole packs. The hostel Casa del Loma was perched in the jungle with an amazing view of the sun setting over the mountains leading up to Santa Marta and the sea. It had a really cool, relaxed atmosphere and we spent the evenings chilling out watching the sunset and listening to the ukulele playing group of guys who had just come from Venezuela. The first day I met a couple of people at the hostel, and we went to Las Pierdas (The Rocks) which was a river nearby the town of Minca. It was really nice to go for a dip in the river - it was quite cold, but great after the heat of the day. We found some mangoes that had just fallen from the trees nearby the track and had a delicious afternoon tea of free mangoes! For dinner we cooked some food on the fire at the hostel which was really cool. The next day, I went to Pozo Azul (waterfall and swimming pool) with Fernando, the Argentinian I had been hanging out with the day before. We ended up missing the turn off as we were walking up the road, and travelled a further half an hour up the mountain than we needed to.. oops. Made it there in the end - it was very refreshing to have a swim after all that walking!

The next day I returned to Rodadero for a night and then caught the bus to Cartagena.

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