After the pretty picture of the mountains around here I needed to balance things with a picture of our survival pack for tonights trip to Taganga.

It is all a short story basically we set off to find hair dye and some fellow travellers to go out with tonight. Finding the travellers in their usual hostel habitat was postponed by the heat (35C) and a bar next to the Caribean selling ice cold beers.

We were intercepted by a Brit called Simon who joined us. He was visiting Colombia after being in a yatching race across the Atlantic. He said that him and a mad German he met were off to nearby Taganga as it was tipped to be a good place for tonight - we were invited.

The plan seemed good, although it is a small fishing village, with our survival pack we can avoid possibly dodgy music, save money and be able to have a laugh whilst listening to any good music at a ear safe distance. A lot of Colombians normally do the same so we are unlikely to look out of place.

After meeting Simon, finding out that the German had already gone we were ready to set off. Colombians normally have a family meal before setting out for the festivities just before midnight. As a result the streets were unusualy calm, the so called calm before the expected storm later. There were few taxis out to take us to Taganga so we found a bench and started on the survival pack until a taxi turned up.

Taganga is indeed a small fishing village on a pretty sandy cove. Bars and clubs playing loud (pretty good) music ran down the shoreline - it wasn't sleepy.

We found somewhere under a thatched shelter to start our drinking. A few young Colombians were doing the same, they invited us to share their bit of concrete. They were a lot more advanced in their drinking and were not backwards in coming forward. A small tent next to us was their 'casa' house for tonight.

They liked heavy rock music going by a little geto blaster playing music that they wanted us to translate for them. The atmosphere was good with lots of laughts we stayed there for two hours until we saw the new year in.

Wiyh the real party infill swing we headed down the shore to a local club playing really loud salsa music. It is always facinating watching this and had a mostly unsuccessful go. We stayed there a while before heading to a roof top place playing a mixture of good music. We really enjoyed it here staying to the end at 4am.

This was one of the most memerable and enjoyable new years we have had.