The Mountains, A National Park and the Beautiful Beaches Further West

Hi there, good to see your lovely faces again! It's been a good while since I last wrote and an entire age since the last place I wrote about. 


I must admit that I didn't find the overbearing heat in Cartagena that easy to deal with. I think my blood actually began to boil in my veins during the day. So when we heard about Minca from some lovely people we met on Playa Blanca the place whispered coolly in our ears with promises of fresh air and cool feeling skin. Yes please we said and set off from Cartagena.


Minca lies 650m up in the Sierra Nervada, the highest coastal mountain range in the world. It is apparently world renowned by twitchers for the many varieties of birds you can find there.


So we headed to Cartagena's bus terminal which is an infeasible seven kilometres out of town. Little did we know at the time that this bus station was to be the first scene of our being ripped off over several tens of kilometres as we travelled towards Santa Marta. We were feeling very relaxed and blissful after our stay on Playa Blanca and we were open to experimenting with types of buses. Wrong. So we wanted a bus to Santa Marta and some friendly looking people hustled us out of our taxi and onto a bus. Alright, we thought, let's go for it, it's a good price. Wrong. They made us change half way through to another bus and of course they had taken our ticket on the previous bus so they charged us again, the same price. We were charged twice. Well, I think we managed to communicate our disgust and frustration even with our limited Spanish, with me shouting 'bad person, bad person' and Sam shaking his head and saying 'very bad, very bad'. I think I even made him feel bad enough to return and give me a nominal amount of money back. The other people on the bus started giving them hell as well when we told them what had happened. Everyone got in on it, shouting at them for us, and what with things falling from the roof of the bus, water sloshing everywhere, us loosing our second ticket, the engine cutting out from time to time as we were driving and the chaos that ensued every time the bus stopped, it was a hugely fraught journey but mercifully short and definitely one for the memory banks. All the people on the bus made sure we knew where to get off (the bus didn't even stop in central Santa Marta) and to our massive relief we found our backpacks to still be under the bus, retrieved them and took stock of where we had been dropped. We were on the side of a main road that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Luckily a taxi man appeared out of nowhere and we showed him a map, asked him where we were and how much it would be to get to Minca. This was where the hand of karma came in, we were in Mamatoco, a suburb of Santa Marta and already halfway to Minca. So the bus-nasties actually saved us a heap of cash and even with our rip off we only spent the amount we were planning to. Take that bad people!! So we chalked it up to experience as we climbed the bumpy mountain road and felt our chests relax as the air got cooler and we neared Minca.

As we got into the tiny town and took some deep breaths, a friendly Irish man came up to us. We felt a bit jaded from our experience already that day and felt a bit apprenhensive but he turned out to be really helpful and lovely. He told us about Casa Loma. House on the Hill. And what a hill. We lugged our huge backpacks up a massively steep thin mud path that led up behind a church, up and up and up and up. When we got there, sweating from every pore and completely out of breath we were met by lovely Steph and funny Lucas, given a cold glass of water and told to turn around. WOW. Behind us the mountains led down to Santa Marta and the sea far in the distance. 

Casa Loma was a lovely place. We were on our own the first night and had the pick of rooms in the tiny tree house type hostal, so of course we picked the best room with a little space that lent out over the mountain and the view down to the twinkling lights of Santa Marta as the sun was beginning to fade. We met some really lovely people in the days that followed, lazed around reading in hammocks, furthered our Spanish a smidge, ate, drank and played cards. I really loved it there. It was also a homey and friendly place to relax after having bombed it around for the last month. After four days though, the time had come to move on.


We returned to Mamatoco with plans to head to Tyrona National Park for a couple of days and then along the coast to some little places that we had been told about by the lovely people we had met. Adventures Ahoy!


We got the bus to Tyrona and began the two hour trek through the jungle to get to the beaches. As usual the undergrowth was alive with moving minibeasts, lizards, termites and a lot of scuttling made by creatures we were too slow to see. All of which were making Sam flinch and bolt every five seconds and unfortunately with good reason because as we came to the first major beach Arricefes, he got stung by a nasty wasp, twice! Once on the back and once on the head! Gritting his teeth through the pain, it was a bad portent for our experience of Tyrona. We found it to be a dirty place and badly looked after and really really expensive. I don't think the money everyone was paying was going towards anything good for the park. We saw rubbish everywhere, horses carrying tonnes of gas canisters and cool boxes filled with soft drinks for tourists, trucks entering piled high with plastic bottles, badly run by unfriendly people and the most horrendous toilets I have come across including Glastonbury! All round and general bad tourism. Not nice. It was the worst night I've spent since being away and we spent it at El Cabo de San Juan. The toilets were filthy, the hammocks were about as much as a double room, the food was expensive, the people unfriendly and the beach was not really worth it. So we awoke at dawn the next day and legged it. This was the most fun we had as it had rained really heavily the previous night (wetting all our things) and so the jungle was full of mud. It was like a two hour assault course, navigating the pits and falls and balances and all in the relative coolness of the morning time. I did fall victim to its squidgeyness however...mmm mud. 

We found lots of rocks and wood formations that looked like strange creatures. Maybe they were trying to tell us something... 

We still smiled throughout it though, it's all part of the ups and downs and adventuring after all...

We started walking from inside Tyrona at dawn and made it to the main gate by about 9am. We'd heard of a beach further west along the coast and out of the park called Costena Beach from some people we had met and it was told to us that you could surf there. I felt that it was a bit unbelievable as I couldn't imagine any surfable waves on a Caribbean beach, but I was assured it was so. A few buses went passed us on the road but none of the drivers seemed to have heard of this place. After a few drivers shrugging their heads and pointing around where we were stood, I realised that I was saying 'la costena por favor' which actually just means 'the coast please' which we were already on! So I started to ask for Playa Costena and the next driver knew what we were talking about. We drove for about ten minutes in a really friendly bus until we were dropped at a sign on the side of the road. About a twenty minute walk later we said to each other that we will definitely be staying at Costena Beach as we couldn't face the walk back and I really needed a shower. So we crossed our fingers that it would be nice. It was that and more, so beautiful and friendly and deserted. We were the only handful of people on this huge long golden sanded beach. 

There weren't many waves but we both managed to have fun on the surfboards. Sam even caught a few waves in the afternoon. So there you go, who'd've thunked it? Surfing the Caribbean sea. Sam was really happy as he got to surf for the first time in his life without a wetsuit. Sweeet.

We met some really lovely people there and stayed in such a beautiful cabana with views of the palms that led to the sea. The food was great too. I think we may be reaching our limit on rice and patacones soon though! We did enjoy macheting our own coconuts open though...

There were creatures everywhere including scorpions, poisonous red snakes and the biggest, fattest most Jeremy Fisher like toad I've ever seen in my life!! He came to visit us every night. Check him outttt...

We stayed there for two nights and on our third day we worried that we may be running out of money so we set off further west along the coast to check out the other little beach villages at the foot of the Sierra Nevada that we had heard about from the people we had met.

There is only one road so we just flagged down the friendly little pootle bus as and when we needed it and went exploring. The first village we came to was Buritaca. It happened that on this day it was the last day of a week long holiday and the entire region and their families had descended upon this place making it a hilarious mix of large neon bathing suited bodies, mountains of beer, brown sea and hotter than hell sun. We hung out a bit and had a drink in the shade watching the maddness ensue. It was like people watching on steriods. When we'd had our fill we walked back up the road and caught the pootle bus again further along to Palomino. 

As we walked down the lane towards the sea, grass started appearing outside beautifully kept gardens in front of lovely painted houses. There were butterflies fluttering all around and the air smelt of flowers. We made it to the beach and saw the familiar blue green of the Caribbean sea. Another beautiful beach with hardly anyone on it. We stopped at what looked like a restaurant on the beach to have some food. The smiley lady inside said no she didn't have a menu but what would we like to eat. I got a plate of the usual; patacones (plantain), rice and salad. Sam had one of his wishes to eat king prawns and the way he was sucking on them, it would seem that they were a hit. After this we wandered and found some lovely looking cabanas but they were full so we wandered back to the road and caught the pootle bus back towards Tyrona national park. 

We got off at another place we had been told about called Los Angeles and went to see the sea again. By now it was getting on for sunset and the sea looked a silky lilac. Sam went for a dip and then we decided to say goodbye to this part of the coast and to head back to Mamatoco and begin to sort ourselves out for our next adventure to the Guajira Peninsula. This had been one of my favourite days since being away. I loved just pootling around and getting on and off and adventuring around. We were the only gringos we saw all day! We were pooped when we got to the hostel and fell fast asleep. The next day we made our way into smelly Santa Marta.

It was good to actually be in the place we could see shimmering on the horizon from our place in Minca but this place is very dirty and smelly. I must admit I was expecting to find odours assaulting my nose long before Santa Marta but haven't so far. My oh my, what an assault. We went for a wander along South America's oldest port and saw a bank holiday service being attended at the oldest cathedral in South America which were both pretty good. As the sun was going down the light was amazing and I took lots of photos of the kids jumping in and out of the waves in front of the boats. 

We've been taking advantage of some down time to replenish the cyber stocks we need to, such as emails and blogging and photos and of course skyping loved ones. We are preparing our bags and minds for our next adventure to the Wild West like land of the Guajira people on the Guijira Peninsula, the most northernly point in South America. We are heading to a desert that turns into sand dunes and leads to a sea called Punta Gallianos for Samly's birthday. We need to get a bus, a jeep, a truck and boat before then though so wish us luck! See you on the other side when I reenter the cyber world once more. Until then take care of yourselves lovely people.

All our love as ever,

Clarence and Sam xxx