My new love: El Choco

I'm in El Valle (Choco, Colombia, for those who Google the places I go to), Google maps doesn't have roads here since they never bothered to make a map here, even tho there are some streets. The place is basically a jungle directly at the coast and just incredible lovely. Also super safe, some (of the few) tourists are even sleeping in hammocks in the jungle, it's amazing! But sadly wifi is basically non existent (not even ATMs) and I just sacrificed 800Mb to provide you almost 130 fotos 😎

But let's start at the beginning. From the mountains Hanna and I went to Buga and made the mistake to go by bus since we wanted to safe some time. I don't remember it exactly but the bus took forever for a ridiculously small amount of good road, so we were stuck in that small city. Originally we planned to go to Buenaventura directly from where the boats to El Choco are leaving. There are no roads through the jungle, the only other option is a plane and these are super expensive here due to Christmas season. Everyone is traveling in Colombia to his family.

The hostel we stayed at was the only one in town and also a pub. It was super awesome tho, the hostel price of 25.000COP (less then 7€) included breakfast, a beer tasting (8 glasses of each 80-100ml) and a free beer of our choice afterwards. Best hostel so far in Colombia!

Our experience with busses was always shit so far, we decided to try hitchhiking again. Walking out of the town we saw a truck waiting for something. In the beginning the driver was worried about taking us because he transported wheat before and it was full of dust but we told him not to worry. He opened it and it was an absolute great ride, way faster then any bus!

We arrived on Buenaventura fast and made our way to the harbor. Like many other harbors a sketchy place, everyone told us to take good care and not leave at night.

We found a ship that was leaving the next day and were able to sleep on it during that night in the harbor. The ship itself is a safe place. It was not only for free but also the easiest option for us since we could use the rest of the day to buy stuff for El Choco. Everything needs to be imported there, we bought the most necessary things: A knife, rice, pasta, sauces and soups, a hammock, fruits and some more food. Oh and rum - easy to make new friends with liquor 🤙

We knew the season is busy due to Christmas but we underestimated the people wanting to go to this area. It is super "off the beaten tracks". We were amongst 64 other passengers on the boat! Just 2 other gringos tho, the rest were locals or Colombians.

It was super crowded! And actually overbooked, some people had to sleep on the ground.

Our lunch was also there, for everyone to see.

The ship was pretty much Colombian chaos how you would expect it.

But it never got boring. I also had no issues with sea sickness, that was more Hannas problem.

Overall the journey was long (22 hours) but nice. We arrived in Bahia Solano in the pouring rain. This is one of the areas of the world with the most rain. The tuc tuc (small 3 wheeled motorbikes with a roof) driver told us there is only one place in the world with more rain. Not sure if that's true but it does rain A LOT. A nice dude from couch surfing showed us good places to stay in El Valle, another super small town where it doesn't rain SO much (still heavy rain almost every second day).

We found a super lovely place, which is like a big holiday apartment but in jungle style.

If I had to describe El Valle in one word it would be "paradise". Beautiful jungles, incredible beaches, super few tourists, lovely locals and temperatures which allow you to be outside in a wet t-shirt without any trouble, yet you can sleep at night easily without an air condition or a ventilator and the mosquitoes aren't too bad. It is amazing - but see for yourself!

We waited that evening for Jo to arrive, he will become the third of our small traveling group. Then we went to the town, it's a 20-30 minute walk but time doesn't really matter here. On town are all nights dance parties on the street, it's their way of celebrating coming Christmas. I sadly forgot to take pictures but it was cool. Not too exciting but nice.

After breakfast we started into the jungles to see the waterfalls around. Luis raised an eyebrow when we told him that we wanted to go without a guide and gave us a very precise description which was impossible to remember for more then 30 minutes. The waterfalls are all close to the beach but there are areas which are too rocky to climb, also due to the waves and tides here.

Jo is a biologist who has been in Peru before, he has some really cool knowledge, for example the name of this four winged dude here. It reminds of a dragonfly but uses it's wings super slow and very gracious. It's also the biggest living dragonfly species on Earth! While we enjoyed this insect we came to the conclusion that we got the wrong way in the jungle, since we SHOULD get back to the beach but just kept on going deeper into the jungle.

We went back and found the right way again, had to hurry up tho because we wanted to take a short cut that is only available on low tide.

We have been tired and went to sleep early, after getting some food.

On the next day Hanna and me decided to find out how and when to get out of El Valle again. We wanted to stay longer but be in Cali after the 24th.

We also checked planes at the local airport and I gotta say I've never seen such a cute airport.

Sadly there were no planes for us, so we will return in a boat. This time a speedboat, since the cargo boat goes on bad dates for us.

After gathering all info, it was already late. Everything here is slow and so are we.

While we have been fishing for information, Jo went into the jungle again and told us he found some poison dart frogs and would go the next day again - we definitely wanted to see this and joined him then. 

But before we met a Spanish couple, a French couple and a Canadian girl and played cards till late

So we left in the next morning into the jungle again and went straight to the places where Jo saw the frogs the day before. I was the first one to spot one!

This one has been a great model, slow didn't move much and stunning patterns! They also aren't so poisonous as you might thing, except when you eat them or inject the the poison somehow into the blood.

We continued in the jungles, had super intense rain but found awesome stuff nonetheless! I'll just show you pictures now without writing so much. There are still way more pictures in the picture section.

It rained at that time, so the pictures aren't 100% but I'm still incredible happy 🤩🤩

There are also black ones but since everything is brown or black and it rained it was almost impossible to find them.

That's it again, thanks for reading! I have WAY more pictures in the picture section, you definitely should check them out. I also made some videos but these would definitely kill my mobile data pretty fast.

Tomorrow we will probably go to a turtle sanctuary and with luck even see big, wild turtles!

See you soon, I have to quit since my battery is at 8% and I need the rest for the flashlight at the beach.

Love and peace from paradise,

Laurin