Santa Marta - Minca - Palomino - Tyrona

On our bus trip from Cartagena to Santa Marta, we got a glimpse of the less beautiful side of the Caribbean coast: trash everywhere you look. It's tragic to see entire villages literally sinking in garbage. In Santa Marta, you can experience an authentic Colombia with a large, bustling shopping street and a vegetable market straight out of old times. But alongside that, you also see a lot of trash, street noise, and poverty. Many children begging in dark alleys for anything they can get - even half-empty soda bottles. Power outages are also a daily occurrence. We booked a hostel a bit outside the city, which turned out to be a great success. On the large rooftop terrace with a pool, we met many other travelers and had a fun evening - including an Afro Dance class, which Rich couldn't resist and thus was well-prepared for a party night in Kingston. Santa Marta is surrounded by beautiful nature, so the next morning we headed to Minca, 600 meters above sea level in the rainforest. In our quest to take an impressive photo for our travel report, we stayed in a bungalow with a view over the treetops - including an outdoor shower experience (in the company of giant spiders and other creatures that don't quite fit the romantic image). We also went on two hikes through the rainforest - in search of the toucan. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to capture it on camera. It's possible that there were thousands of motorbikes passing by, each rushing past us at 100 miles per hour. That spoiled the mood a bit. It's almost ridiculous to feel silly when you're climbing a mountain in that heat, with a humidity of 100%, every two minutes being passed by a motorcycle kicking up dust - and at the top, all the lazy people in the pond won't give you any space. We thought we were being clever and set off to the next waterfall in the afternoon, when everyone else is already on their way back. It worked out great and we almost had the waterfall to ourselves. Of course, we had to pay for it with 350 mosquito bites, but you have to make sacrifices, right? We spent the evening in hammocks at our hippie hostel right by the river - with lots of good conversations. We had plenty of time for long conversations because the gas stove on site just didn't want to boil our spaghetti. But the good company in the middle of the forest, with bird chirping and other sounds of nature, made us forget our hunger and mosquito bites. We would have liked to stay longer.

Our next destination is Palomino, a small fishing village and the starting point for a trip to the famous Tyrona National Park. Originally, we wanted to hike through the national park with our new friends from Minca, Lauret & Nils from Holland. Unfortunately, we didn't take into account that we have to pay the entrance fee (a whopping 135,000 COP) and everything else in Palomino in cash, as the internet there is rather unreliable. Rookie mistake, we let ourselves be blinded by the fancy hostels and restaurants everywhere, which could also be in Europe. Unfortunately, the next ATM is in another village, half an hour away. No problem, we thought, we'll just wake up an hour earlier, quickly go there, and be ready to start the hike at 8:30 sharp. It didn't quite work out that way. Our tuk-tuk broke down somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and the buses in this rainforest area didn't seem to be running either. But we still made it and, including the entrance procedure, we finally started the hike around noon. Due to the slight delay, we had to shorten the route a bit. Nevertheless, we saw the beautiful bays, the rainforest, and even some monkeys. And halfway through, we even met Lauret & Nils again and were able to join them for the second part of the hike and hear what we missed (maybe not such a bad thing, as the 7-hour hike sounded quite exhausting).

The next few days we spent at our hostel by the pool, walking along the wild beach, throwing a beach party (the atmosphere was more chaotic than relaxed - probably due to various illegal substances being smoked, licked, and chewed), eating delicious food, and eventually getting so into the chill mood that we almost forgot we had to check out and move on. We were already fully immersed in the Caribbean vibe. People here seem to be slower and generally less rushed. We only experienced the opposite once, namely when we wanted to check the grammatical correctness of the sentence we had just learned from the waitress in a restaurant: 'Me puedes dar por favor una copa de vino tinto?' She immediately brought us one, even though the first one was still full in front of us.

We took a public bus back to Santa Marta (always a highlight in those crowded buses - personal space doesn't exist and everyone sits on top of each other as if it were the most natural thing, but we're not used to it). It was already pitch dark when we arrived in Santa Marta. So we took a taxi because we had booked a cheap accommodation near the airport, in a more remote neighborhood. Unfortunately, it turned out that our hotel was not actually in that neighborhood (our chill mode completely messed with our sense of direction). At first, we were a bit confused, sitting there in the dark alley with all our belongings and no place to stay. But in the end, we splurged and spent a night in a 4-star hotel. It was also good - just not quite as cheap as planned.