Santa Marta to Palimino

14/07/13 to 20/07/13 - We left the south of Colombia and flew to Santa Marta on the north coast, facing the Caribbean Sea. It was a relief to be back in a hot, tropical climate after months up in the cold Andes. We would need to acclimatise again though, and we soon regretted going for the cheaper, fan room… the temperature was back up above 33°C, and didn’t seem to cool much by night. At last, we were thankful for cold showers.

After breakfast, struggling all morning to cope with the heat and realising that S.M wasn’t really a place to stick around in for long, we hopped on a bus to Tayrona National Park. After avoiding the midday heat with a shady lunch, we walked the 4km to a lovely campground called Castilettes, complete with its own beach where turtles come to lay eggs. The owners of the campground were a lovely couple with two cute girls, a garden full of lizards and a parrot. Despite the hazardous coconut trees, we decided to stay the night here by hiring two hammocks to sleep in. We had a nice fish dinner prepared by Esther and then watched a bit of TV with the couple on a 12-inch TV on the patio. Then we saw some familiar faces as a host of Colombian ex-footballers, including Carlos Valderama (of big hair fame) and René Higuita (of Scorpion kick fame), appeared on the most popular soap opera.

We fell asleep in our hammocks to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and the odd gecko chattering away in the roof above us. At breakfast the owners were nursing a bat that had damaged its wing (not surprising as they were flying around like nutters the night before). After waking to the view of the sea and having a quick dip, we walked along the trail through the jungle to some more beaches, all of which were more popular than Castilettes. On the way we passed several egg-shaped rocks. These were create by indigenous folk a long time ago, and they used to look through the small holes made in them to see the future (no doubt they must have chewed too many coca leaves).




It was cooler by the sea, but the afternoons were still hot, and after walking most of the day, we were relieved to cool off in the sea again. We finally camped in the busiest place of all at Cabo de San Juan, which was full of backpackers and was pricier than some of the other options we had walked past earlier (a bit annoying). We didn’t want to back track though, so we hired a tent, which was sticky hot and not as comfortable as the hammocks.

The next morning we trekked up to the lost city of Pueblito, a ruined city of which once housed 2000 people in pre-Hispanic times. The trek was tough as it was mostly uphill and over big rocks, and we were sweating the whole way due to the humidity. We did spot some interesting wildlife though, including a tiny snake, big fat noisy locusts and some big red-headed woodpeckers jumping from tree to tree. 

After the lost city we stopped at a small village inhabited by some Kogi people (descendants of the Tairona people), all dressed in white cloth with long black hair and cloth hats. They were selling some cold drinks and we asked if they had any lunch, and they didn’t, but one of the guys was really nice and gave us some bananas to keep us going. We made it to the village of Calabazo on the main road and waited for the bus back to Santa Marta, where we stayed the night (and took a room with air-con this time for an extra pound) and somehow ended up buying a hammock (as we now love them) from a street seller, which we would now need to carry for the rest of trip.

The next morning we caught a bus, which broke down. We waited by the side of the road for another bus, which took us to the beach-side village of Palomino. The beach was very long, and there just a couple of guesthouses and campgrounds. We went for hammocks again, and were even closer to the sea this time, which was very rough and not really for swimming, but good enough to have a quick dip and cool off. There wasn’t much to do but relax, cope with the heat and watch graceful pelicans flying millimetres above the waves in perfect ‘V’ formation. We were treated to a local band, glass ball jugglers and fire-twirlers (the usual hippy stuff) on a beach front café in the evening and there seemed to be nearly a hundred people that had flooded this otherwise quiet beach. They had all disappeared again by the next day, and we spent one day relaxing and enjoying the beach.