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Published: January 28th 2010
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...After our nice, but not so peaceful Christmas we decided to head to a beach where swimming can be done without the fear of suffocating on condoms, without the constant worries of getting free body piercings from broken bottles and without people. Three days was the plan, but it turned out to be a little bit longer.
Boxing day we left on a bus with Tanja, the two Austrian girls Natalie and Ulli towards what sounded like paradise. An hour out of Santa Marta we arrived at the camping site
??? ??????? and found what turned out to be our home for 8 days.
This small family run campsite was occupied by a few Colombian families and some Colombian surfers. We were the only tourist around. The facilities were simple, two bath rooms, with the equal amounts of showers, no electricity apart from the family house and a deep, warm feeling that this was just where we wanted to be after nearly 4 and a half months of some amazing sights that still needed to be processed, long, tiring bus trips and no place to call home. (Traveling this long is not as easy going as some may think)
We
quickly hung up our beds under a palm leaf roof and made our way to the beach. It is how you imagine a Caribbean beach should be: miles of untouched (not quite true) sand, palm trees and nice blue water, just that the ocean was ruff, which explains the presence of the surfers.
From here on it was just soaking up the sun, eating fresh mangoes and water melon, cooling down in the waves and dining on fresh fish cooked from the wife. Oh and how could I forget, drinking rum, rum, and more rum. Don't you just hate the Christmas stress.
We quickly grouped up with the surfers, having 4 girls makes that rather easy, and enjoyed their company and insight into the colombian way of life.
On the second or third day Katy and Tom arrived, a couple from London that had just came back from a 3 days trip and survived a few near death experiences; Tom survived a fish attack at night and Katy kept hold of her toe after squashing it under the seat of a 4WD going over a bump.
After a night or two together on the beach, drinking rum next to a
big camp fire, we all decided that it would be great if everybody stayed at least until the new year, so that we could have our new years party all together on the beach. After some thinking we all agreed that a fire, rum and some games would be a lot more fun and stress free than taking a 6 hours bus to Cartagena, finding some new people to celebrate with, finding a hostel and a place to actually enjoy the night.
That was that, we would ask the cook to make us a nice meal, we would all take the bus into Santa Marta to go shopping for some drinks and food, and then have a nice large fire.
The next days we spent our time on relaxing and enjoying the Idea of our first stress free new years eve.
One day the 4 of us went along with the surfers: Samuel, his brother Juan and some others to some nearby waterfalls. This was fantastic as the water was running of/down a large rock face creating some big pools to swim in and decent spots for diving. The days was nice and relaxing and something different than the beach.
News years eve was great. It started off with the creation of a
año viejo. A puppet which is burnt on new years eve containing messages from the old year (good or bad). Nobody quite understood what it meant, we just wanted to burn something really and use some traditional rituals to prove that we are not just gringos. Afterwards we gathered our wood to burn. Using some impressive skills Tom and I had picked up over the days we were able to get most of the beach cleaned up in no time. The best skill not being the two wooded stretcher-like thing with which we used plants to tigh up the logs preventing them from falling off. No, the best skill was taking the wheelbarrow.
After that it was lime cutting, and head band making. Tom and Katy had brought back some cloth from their shopping trip colored with the colombian flag. We wanted to use this to make us look more...well we just wanted to have head bands really. So me made enough for us all and some to hand out to anyone interested to wear one. Then dinner was served. Fish, with coconut rice, Platanos (fried
Banana which is really tasty) and Salad. This was rounded of with face paint and glitter. Also a nice little gift from the couples shopping trip. Even though Katy had glitter with her anyway, as she says "in case of an emergency". The girls started painting colorful pictures on each other, but Tom and I settled for the manly war lines. Me making Tom look more like a kitten than a warrior.
After getting the fire on its way, which also was easy for us survival experts, we started playing some games. First up was LSD in German (Laufen, Saufen, Drehen) or drinking, running, turning. A game with no purpose. The rules our: drink a sip, then run a defined distance towards a stick, there you turn around the stick for ten times before making your way back. Relay style. Being seven we needed a way to make the teams even. Tom had to carry the año viejo on his back for his go.
The colombians must of thought we were nutters, shouting, running, turning around a stick and then falling over, only to make everbody laugh and get even louder.
This highly interesting game was then followed by
a karaoke euro-vision song contest. The batterys from the mp3 player had run out, and Tanja being a hobby singer then grabbed her moment and gave us all a wonderful performance of the euro vision songs sang by Croatia. Thanks Tanja, you were great.
To wrap up the game evening we played the world famous Limbo. The surfers got involved and even some other Colombians couldn't resist. But with all the Salsa running through their blood they couldnt beat the "no messing around and get on with it" attitude of the English. I won using a not so fancy, but efficient technique.
At twelve it was time to burn the año viejo. As the flames rose so did the amount of consumed alcohol, by then everybody was having a blast around the fire under the full moon.
The rest of the evening was spent getting drunk, some dancing and sing along (Juan had some speakers with power) and radom talks with random people.
At about 5am the party was over and the most went to bed.
I found a bottle of
aguardiente and finished it of with two over colombians while chatting IN SPANISH about music, sport and, if I
remember correctly, politics. Not bad for someone who cant speak spanish. 7am was bed time, the party was over and so was one of the best new years eve parties i´ve ever had...
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