Burnt shoulders and big grins.

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So here we are sitting in Riohacha in part of the northern most region of Colombia, burnt, hot but smiling. Wow there has been much adventure since I last wrote in Bogota and we have travelled quite a way.

We caught a bus (that was meant to be 8 hours, but was closer to 12) to Bucaramanga, not arriving until about 10pm. This was probably not the best idea, we holed up in the closest hostel we could find but our glimpse of Buca was not a great one. Perhaps we were in a seedy area but there were alot of drunk leering men and prostitutes. We were in a tiny room partitioned off from someones garage, and woke up to thumping music and car fumes rapidly filling our room. So we decided to leave a little earlier than anticipated; right away. Our daylight glimpses of the town were a little less seedy, but it just seemed like a grungy dirty old city with not much to offer.
Unfortunately upon arriving at the bus station, we found out that the next bus to Santa Marta was not until 930pm! A little disgruntled and still adjusting to the new found heat (it seems that everywhere except for Bogota is HOT) we made a hasty decision to kill time in the nearby colonial town of Giron. What started as a time waster turned into a lovely day, Giron is a beautiful little town and well worth the visit. It is tiny and quiet, all the buildings are low colonial houses all painted white with dark brown trimmings and doors. There was a big river in town and lots of little plazas with trees in them. We spent the day wandering through this sleepy town and absorbing its wonderful vibe. We spent the hottest part of the day in a tiny little run down restaurant eating alot, drinking cold beers and watching the world cup (of course, this is south america after all) with the locals. I can't remember who was playing but we were up cheering for the goals just like the locals!

A long cold (they love to blast the air con) overnight bus ride later and we were in Santa Marta, a bustling fishing town on the coast. It was hot and dusty and crazy but there was the ocean, muchos helados (icecream) and cold beers. Its not the prettiest of towns and tourism has hit hard, with every second person trying to sell you something, but at night the breeze blows through, rumba music plays and you can drink a beer whilst watching the sun set over the Carribean. Nice.

We managed to wrangle our way onto a local minibus (of which we were overly proud given our pathetic spanish) and make our way to the tiny town of Taganga. I was expecting it to be super touristy from what i had heard, but i was pleasantly surprised. There were alot more Westerners than we were used to seeing, but unlike Santa Marta, the locals didnt hassle you at all. We set ourselves up in a beautiful hostel Oso Perozoso, which absolutely made our stay. It is run by two lovely Americans and is like a rambling treehouse, very narrow and piled haphazardly on top of itself. We slept in the hammock dorm, right on the very top, which had a great breeze and a delicious view of the Carribean and the Andes on opposing sides. Lovely. The hostel seemed to be filled with girls who had travelled all through SA on their own and had a great time, which was heartening.
(As an aside, for an extra 4000 pesos, about 2 dollars, you got a great breakfast which involved crepes or french toast loaded with tropical fruits and drizzled liberally with yoghurt and honey, yum!)
The town itself wasnt that engaging, the beach was a little bit dirty due to a huge storm on our first day that literally turned the streets into caramel coloured rivers and washed the rubbish out to sea.
The storm was actually hilarious, the town is certainly not equipped for it, but everyone took it with amazing good humour and splashed around happily until the hot hot sun dried it all up.
It was definately worth a hot hike up the hill to the next beach, Playa Grande which was much cleaner and less crowded, although we made sure to go in a group because someone had been mugged on that path recently.
It was a little hard to sleep because music pounded non stop until about 4am, really really loud especially because we were pretty much out in the open (we only had a little thatch roof over the top). It seems to be a bit of a party town, of which we didnt really partake. On one night though we tried mojitos and loved them, so one turned into muchos mojitos!
We stayed alot longer than we would have because the hostel was so lovely and relaxing, hammocks are surprisingly comfortable to sleep in, and on the last day Anna got really sick and had to stay hammock ridden for a whole day. She is fine now though! Our next stop was to go further on to Parque Nacional Tayrona. I will make that a separate entry so I dont tire your eyes out!

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