Luke and I had a lazy morning in the hostel in Santa Marta before we finally decided that we should head to Tayrona National Park. The park is famous for its beautiful scenery and its picture perfect Caribbean beaches. It certainly did not disappoint.

However, whether the trip would be a success was uncertain for a while. The park entrance closes at 4pm and is just over an hours bus ride away from Santa Marta. Being rather laxadasical in our approach the time had reached 1.45pm before we finally set off. However, before our 2 day trip Luke needed a new lighter so he could enjoy a few cigarettes in the park. It turns out that lighters are a rarity in Santa Marta as we were pointed all across town for 45m before we finally found a suitable vendor.

So at 2.30pm we caught a collectivo (minivan) to the park entrance and enjoyed a journey with a rather colourful 78 year old American/Colombian who had been hanging out in Las Vegas and Hollywood for his working life before retiring to the region.

We got to the park entrance at 3.35pm and had to undergo an extremely rigerous check of our bags and our person for drugs and alcohol before we could buy our entrance ticket at 3.52pm. From here we caught the last 4 x 4 ride which takes you to the end of the road 15 minute further down the road. Finally, we were on foot and started the 45 minute walk to Arrecifes which is the first beach, and our overnight campsite.

The walk was awesome, with giant boulders, stunning beaches and awesome jungle all around us. We even saw a couple of tiny monkeys on the way as well as a handful of lizards and some weird rabbit like creatures. We got to the beach just before sunset and it was one of the best beaches I have seen. The sand was yelow and soft, the beach was huge with only a handful of people on and then there are giant boulders at either end, a small lagoon and river behind you and then just thick jungle behind that. It certainly felt like the Caribbean. After a few quick snaps we walked to our campsite for the night where we hired a tent. We had another quick peak at the beach as the sun went down and retired to the bar for a relaxing beer before hitting the tent.

As we had wasted most of the day at the hostel we decided to make the most of the next day, so for one of the first times we got up early, and hangover free and headed off to the natural pool where you could swim.

The only drawback of this part of coastline is that the sea is dangerous and you cannot swim in most of the waters unless there is a break further out to sea.

The natural pool was more of open sea than a pool, but did have a natural break further out preventing the dangerous currents from hitting the beach. As we got there so early we practically had the beach to ourselves and so took advantage of the situation to get a couple more calendar shots...

We went for a swim and did beach stuff for as long as we could (not very long what with being English and Irish) and then headed back into the jungle for a further 45 minute walk to the next beach.

This time we were at San Juan which is a small peninsula which sticks out with a beautiful cove on either side. The beaches were awesome once more with palm trees just off the sand as you see in the postcards. We also bumped into Rebecca who we hung out with in Medellin, and who we also saw on the Lost City Trek. She introduced us to her friends from her trek and the group of us spent the day swimming in the sea and relaxing on the beach.

At 4pm it was time for Luke and I to leave paradise so we got on a rather expensive speed boat and headed back to Taganga. We could have trekked back for a couple of hours, but what with being lazy, sunburnt and bankrupt we chose the expensive boat instead so we could see the rest of the coastline. We had not considered the rough ocean though and what with the extremely rapid engines it meant that we often crashed into the waves at huge speeds which broke almost everyones spines on board.

Once docked in Taganga we soon started negotiating on diving courses for Luke and some fun dives for me. We shopped around for an hour or so and discussed the options over a beer before returning to our preferred choice to sign up for some diving starting 2 days later. Soon after we flagged down the next collectivo heading to Santa Marta and headed back to our hostel.