All things going to plan (which they rarely do and which is pretty tricky when there is no plan) we should be leaving wonderful Colombia tomorrow. Headed in the general direction of Venezuela. Sounds simple doesn`t it... but I have to say - tearing ourselves away from the beaches, sunny days, thundery nights, rum and lemon slushies... not to mention swinging in hammocks overlooking the carribean sea, is proving quite the task. Have mercy!
After finding the so called Lost City and doing away with our Lara Croft / Indianna Jones personas, we got down to the business of getting Ben his Advanced dive ticket. Quite a cheap place to do it and since ol`FAUI is defunct... why ever not. So Ben got to spend 3 days doing a couple of dives per day and reading the odd chapter while sipping beers at night... its a TOUGH course people! I accompanied the brave scholar to one of the dive sites and got to do a couple of dives myself. Very cruisey diving indeed. Weird visibility - since theres river drain-off in the area so the shallow sections are quite murky but as you go deeper the visibility picks up nicely. Saw some moray eels, MASSIVE lobsters and lots of little intricate thingybobbys! Lots of brain coral too. Had a nice current for most of one dive so barely had to swim. Just drifted and watched the under-water world go by.
Ben did tricky things like a night dive, some navigation, and an underwater fruit identification test (?!) He passed. It was a tomato. Certification obtained, the next plan was to get a boat around the coast to the Tayrona National park. Rumoured to be home to some incredible beaches. Well that plan went a little by the wayside when Miss Lemon Slushie was introduced to Mr Bacardi Rum and then shown a direct path to Angela`s mouth! Staying up past dawn was lovely and all but recovery day definitely required.
Recovery day done - to Tayrona we set. An hour and half boat trundle brought us into a wee double bay. Two gorgeous bays, lined with coconut palms, flanked by massive granite boulders and split by a fresh water stream. Not bad. We had heard, however, that there was better further along the coast. Donned our gear and off we trekked. For quite some time. In intense heat and humidity. With a heavy pack. And discovered that the rumoured better beaches weren`t anywhere near as nice as the one we just came from. Quick tanty - about face - and trek back.
All was soothed once we had ourselves a swim and cracked our first beverage for the evening. Our accomodation, such that it was, consisted of a pagoda perched up on one of the granite outcrops. Into this were hung as many hammocks as the uprights could take and within these hammocks lay the unitied nations of backpackers. All as chilled and thrilled to be here as each other.
Since the purpose of this sojourn was to relax and enjoy the beaches... we did just that. Swimming, swinging and swigging. The occasional coconut foray was made and after much bashing, cracking and stabbing we all got a snack and someone got a coconut coctail cup. Why ever not?
Evenings saw the weather roll in. Sunset would be followed by a distant lighting show which occasionally would be not so distant and even led to the drenching of many hammock residents in their sleep. Ah well - only take a few minutes to dry off again.
Time came to leave. Made our way back here to Taganga with every intention of leaving the next day (honest) but loh... tis some sort of festival and normal bus schedules are suspended. Dang!!! Have to spend ANOTHER day in paradise! Poor us.
And there it is folks. Life in the Carribean lane! Please don`t feel sorry for us! We`ll soldier on.
