Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
After 5 days of non stop treking in Ciudad Perdida we all agreed that it would be nice to spend some time relaxing in the beautiful national park Tayrona. Tayrona National Park is a protected area in the Colombian northern Caribbean region. It is roughly 34 kilometres from the city of Santa Marta. The park covers approximately 30 square kilometres of marine life areas in the Caribbean sea and approximately 150 square kilometres of land including part of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range. Although we all wanted to spend time in the park Franky, Elien, Sal and I were keen to go that next day, where as Stu, Carly, Barry and Jen wanted and extra day to chill at the Dreamer to recover. My main reason for heading over as soon as possible was because I wanted to do my PADI Open Water qualification and still get to travel to Cartagena with the group.
The next day the 4 of us jumped on the bus for the 2 hour ride to the national park. On arrival you have to have your bags checked and all plastic bags you have on you must be exchanged for biodegradable bags. One of the guards told me that they were confiscating my treking Swiss army knife, he called over another guy who looked at it and then pretty much told the first guy that he couldn´t be bothered to do the paper work and that they should just give it back to me :-) I was happy with that. We knew that there was a walk to get to the camping area that we wanted to stay at but we didn't realise that it would be over 2 hours long. Even though it was tiring after the trek it was such a beautiful walk that we forgiot about our tired muscles. Franky and Elien kept me entertained on the way by teaching me more funny dutch words. The large beach we had to walk across looked like it had some amazing surf and was stunning but it was a no swim zone due to over 150 deaths cause by a powerful rip current.
Eventually we reached our distination of El Cabo. The sleeping options here were eithe pre-set tents or hammocks, there were amazing hammocks up in a hill but they were near on immpossible to get especailly for a group of 8. We all wanted hammocks because it was near 40 degrees C and we would get cooked in a tent. When we asked at dreamer if we needed to book for hammocks they told us that at this time of year we didn´t need to worry but they uninterested receptionist told us that they were fully booked and a tent was our only option! For me although it was not going to be comfortable it was travelling. What I didn´t like so much was the overpricing of the whole camp with no effort to actually make it a nice place to stay (other than the high hammocks). The beaches were unbelievably beautiful but the site was a bit of a state with a restaurant that felt a little bit like a dirty outdoor school canteen. Our tent was full of holes and Franky and Eliens was missing its waterproof cover. We decided to head over to the beach and that genuinly made everything feel better for the time being.
After dinner we decided it would be fun to go for a walk to a deserted beach through a wooded area that Franky had scouted out earlier in the day. It was an eire place to walk in the dim lights of a couple of head torches so of course it was the perfect opportunity for me to freak the girls out a few times :-) hehe. When we arrived at the beach it was so peaceful with the gentle waves washing up the white sand in the moonlight. Suddenly someone spoke behind us, we turned and standing there was a park ranger pointing at our bags. He searched Franky and I and then the girls bags and asked if we had alcahol or drugs, which we did not. He told us we had to back back in El Cabo by 10:30 so that cut our time away from our tents down a little bit. We relaxed and got philosophical about the stars for the next hour or so then headed back to the ovens..... I mean tents! That night mosquito´s were rife and the heat was staggering. I decided to get out of the tent at something rediculous like 4am to find Franky and Elien just sat up in to tent unable to sleep. I got dressed and climbed out onto the rocks in the sea and watched the sunset, it was a beautiful morning and there was a cool breeze out here. I saw franky doing the exact same thing on some rocks across from me. I sat there for about 2 hours falling in and out of sleep with a big grin on my face so happy to be surrounded by all of this beauty and also not to be sweating anymore.
In the morning we went to the reception to try and get hammocks to sleep in. Franky had managed to find out the day before that if you want to be in the hammocks on the hill it was first come first serve. We waited until check out time to see if anyone left. It turned out that 6 spaces had come up so we nabbed them plus 2 lower hammocks, almost perfect. We speant the whole day on the beach relaxing and swimming. There was a big fish that kept swimming through Sal and my legs that kept us entertained for ages. At 35 degrees C it was cooler on the beach then it had been in the tents so we were all passed out at one point or another throughout the day. When we went for some lunch in the plastic chair filled restaurant I thought about how beautiful they could make this place a few candles, low lighting and wooden furnature would make you forget how much you were paying for a plate of over cooked pasta. When the other 4 turned up in the late afternoon we had to flip a coin to decided which 2 got to have the high hammocks and who had the low. Stu and Carly gracfully accepted defeat and Barry and Jen were of coarse very happy to get the best hammocks in the camp on arrival. That evening there was a beautiful sunset that made the sky fucsia pink and created silhouettes of the palm trees and rock all around. We had all agreed that we would trek through the jungle for an hour in the dark to get to a nice restaurant the others had spotted and their walk up. It was a tricky task and we were all starving but it was worth the wait. The restaurant was fantastic with open sides and all wood built. The food was then best I had eaten in a long time and there were even 2 entertainers, one being Stu reading his Spanish childrens book to us all making us all laugh so hard. The second was a big tree frog that was hastling the chefs by hoping over the counters before sticking itself on the roof. After a great night and a trck through firefly lit jungle we headed to our comfy hammocks for a breezy, mozzy free night :-)
Next day Sal and I made our way back to the Dreamer so I could start my dive coarse. The next time we would spend time with Ocho would be in Cartegena.
- comments