We got dropped off at the National Park entrance by our slightly crazy chauffeur Jose where I had to pay 5 times what the girls did just for being that little bit older! And then started our mini adventure and easily the stupidest thing we have done yet - we ended up trekking for almost 2 hours BAREFOOT through the sodden jungle!

With Jose now acting as an impromptu guide we tried to plot out way through the 'path' which had turned to inches deep of mud and sludge due to the recent heavy rains, that even the horses which went past carrying more sane people struggled with.

Starting out feeling positive and with my sparkly clean hammock in one hand and shopping bags of food & clothes in the other, we soon realised that it was gonna be much harder than we initially thought. Flip flops became more of a hindrance than a help and so we ended up treading round the edges of the path, and a lot of the time into the jungle itself, in barefoot, praying that the next step would crunch only a leaf or a branch and nothing more sinister!

With having no free arms to grab anything to help, sometimes there was no alternative but to plunge your foot into the slightly unnervingly warm mud, not knowing how far down it would go and dreading to think what may lie underneath the surface, especially after seeing the aforementioned horses being pretty happy to relieve themselves wherever took their fancy!!

With every slip in the mud I pictured my hammock going flying out of my hand and my camera out of my pocket into a pool of mud! By the time we reached the end I was pouring in sweat and my arms were aching from gripping on to everything for dear life, but in a peverse kind of way every branch ducked, every tentative footstep put into the unknown, every line of ants avoided at the last moment was great fun and exhilerating. And my feet were surprisingly not too worse for wear by the end of it all!

After washing a little in the river we finally arrived at where we were gonna spend our nights there and was introduced to Rafa who owned the place, and who helped us hang our hammocks up. By this time we just wanted to get to the beach so we set off on the 15 minute walk, which thankfully didn't involve quite the same trauma as the big walk, as felled palm trees and sandbags showed us the way.

We literally had about 20 minutes on the beach before the sun was brought to an abrupt end by a spectacular fork of lightening followed by without doubt the loudest thunderclaps I have ever heard! We scurried back through the jungle and spent the next couple of hours swinging in our hammocks with the storm raging above us! After dumping tonnes of rain it eventually subsided enough for us to get clean in the open air showers covered by the odd palm tree whilst the last few drops of rain came down.

Later in the evening Rafa joined us playing cards and we soon got through 3 bottles of rum and made him very merry by fixing the drinking games so that he lost regularly and pretty soon his flirting with the girls became nothing more than glazed looks whilst swinging from the toilet door!!

Bed time came and despite struggling with my mozzy net around the hammock and what seemed like the loudest croaking frog nearby all through the night, I had a surprisingly good nights sleep, which was only disturbed occassionally by the steady stream of falling coconuts all around our hut!

On Tuesday we were able to have a pretty full day at the beach at an area with a natural swimming pool formed by the rockwork. The scenery af the beaches, with huge boulders at the end of each headland, driftwood washed up onto the beach and dense jungle in behind, really gave the place a bit of a shipwrecked feel to it.

Sure enough the afternoon storms came and so again we retreated back to our lodging, and swinging in my hammock writing this journal, with the sound of thunder just audible above "The Balcony Scene" on my iPod I felt pretty chilled out and relaxed.

The final morning on Wednesday was the hottest it had been since we got to the coast and I was kinda grateful when the time came to head back and pack up our stuff for the walk back to the NP entrance where we were getting picked up again by Jose. In the blistering heat and with the trail not marked at all, the walk seemed to take forever but eventually we made it to the end, albeit a bit sunburnt and knackered by the end - good job the local guyselling ice creams was there!!

We were planning to have a nice relaxing final night in Colombia back at Taganga but soon after we arrived back the heavens opened yet again. That would have been fine, but then a bit later almost the second after I had just finished showering the hostel was plunged into darkness along with the rest of the resort as the most terrential rain and lightning we have seen yet showed no signs of abating!

Watching the lightning show from upstairs in the hostel was pretty spectacular as some of the flashes illuminated the bay below us, and although trying to pass a bit of time by candlelight was fun at first, we soon turned hungry! With nowhere in Taganga having any power, we couldn't eat anywhere there so we got a taxi to Santa Marta with a crazy man who insisted on overtaking on uphill bends despite the fact that the storm had caused numerous landslides on the roads!

After a quick & basic meal we returned to the hostel with it still in darkness and with no electricity to power the fans the room was horribly sweaty and stuffy, though half way though the night they did kick in with a vengance and I ended up actually in my sleeping bag to bring to a close our time in Colombia!

With less than 2 weeks until the royal arrival and with a whole other country still to get through, we had better et a wriggle on........!!