we took a bus from santa marta to the park entrance. from there it was to be a 2-3 hour hike into a place called cabo san juan where you are able to rent a tent and sleep for the night. unfornunately there is no mid-range option. you are either in the tents or you can stay in these gorgeous ecohabs that are $200-300pp per night......not in our budget!
so we set off. i expected the hike to be hot and humid, which it was. the beginning of the hike was pleasantly along a boardwalk with an orchestra of frogs serenading us as we walked.
there were a couple spots where we got peaks of beautiful coastline.
and then the hike became an entirely different animal!! there are basically two seasons in this part of south america, the dry season and the rainy season. currently it is the rainy season, which means that every afternoon there is an hour or so of rain. the result being a great deal of mud! we had to slog through mid-shin deep mud for the second half of the hike....it was exhausting! thankfully the kids thought it was some grand adventure and laughed the entire way!
eventually we finally made it to cabo san juan and got ourselves set up in a couple of tents. it felt a little bit like we had arrived at a music festival.....minus the music. we put on our suits and jumped immediately in the ocean to cool off.
within about an hour it started raining....i mean really really raining. the kids and i actually stayed in the ocean in the rain for a good long while (which they were both absolutely delighted with!). when we got of the water we ended up hunkering down in the restaurant area as the rain was not letting up. we ran to our tent for some dry clothes, our bag of food and some playing cards. todd and i ordered a bottle of wine and we planned to wait it out!
it did not let up for several hours! our bottle of wine was empty and we'd eaten most of our food. but the rain was still coming down!
and it was not just raining, it was a torrential downpour with crazy thunder and lightning (i am NOT a fan of thunderstorms!)
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| raining sideways! |
needless to say our tent did not survive unscathed. there were these egg carton type sleeping mats in each tent that basically ended up being sponges of water.
the kids are so so resilient. they both got in the tent and laid down on the wet mats, with no blankets, no pillows, no nothing, and they went to sleep. no complaints. i had a bottle of wine to help me get to sleep, but they just accepted that things were what they were and went to bed. todd and i both commented that though they will complain or whine about stupid little things, when push comes to shove the kids can suck it up and deal with some pretty crazy shit!
in the morning we woke to that beautiful paradise we were promised. it was really quite beautiful, no doubt.
we also saw they we weren't the only ones drinking their way into sleep the night before...
but after the night we had we were quite ready to go. we had learned our lesson with the mud and decided that the cost of the horses to carry us out was worth every penny.
and so ended the chapter on tayrona. both todd and i decided that even without the mud and thunderstorm factors we didn't feel the park was worth the effort. certainly it is beautiful but sharing paradise with 150+ people is not my definition of paradise!! not worth it!
we made our way back to our hostel in santa marta and couldn't be happier to be there! santa marta itself doesn't have much to see.....and in fact we did not leave our hostel once. partly because our hostel was fabulous! it is called drop bear hostel (the name has some throw back meaning to australia as the owners are australian). BUT as this is colombia, the hostel was converted from a mansion previously owned by a drug trafficker. it was built in the late 70s/early 80s so likely not a cocaine trafficker, more likely a marijuana trafficker. anyway the place had a pool, a huge game room with a pool table and ping pong table, a movie area, a bar and a restaurant. oh and air conditioning in our bedroom! it was delightful!
yesterday was thanksgiving and although there was no turkey and mashed potatoes for us we were thankful for this adventurous little family and for the gift of the adventure itself....and for dry beds!!
we are less than a week away from coming home and we will spend our remaining days chillin at beach towns along the caribbean coast. today we will make our way to the town of taganga for a couple nights.
hasta luego!
Love the rain and mud! After that night 200-300pp doesn't sound so bad. Enjoy the coast😘
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