Whilst on the north Caribbean coast of Colombia, we went to this national park where the steep- sided rainforest sweeps right down to meet the ocean.
The Tayrona indigenous Indian people used to live in this area before the Spanish came in the C16th and there are still some native people living in this whole region, some of whom live in communities closed to anyone else. We saw quite a lot of people in their traditional dress in the towns we went through on our way.
We did a trek which took us up through the (hot and sweaty) rainforest to the ruins of an ancient indigenous town called Pueblito. On our way, we saw monkeys in the trees, large trails of leaf cutter ants and lots of yellow striped poison dart frogs. At Pueblito, there were a couple of reconstructed houses as well as lots of ancient stone steps and round stone walls where other houses had been. It felt like being in a film!
We walked down to the beaches, the path was tough and went over lots of huge boulders. The beaches were beautiful - turquoise water, golden sand and palm trees but wild, not neatly combed like Caribbean island beaches in other countries are. A walk and bus took us back to our lodging, an Eco- hostel in the jungle with tree iguanas, red squirrels and wild budgies - fab!
