Tayrona National Park - Days 19 - 21
We’d heard that the hammocks on the beach in Tayrona tend to fill up pretty quickly in the summer, so we wanted to get to the campsite at Cabo San Juan by 11, meaning we had to be at the park gate by 9 at the latest. Which is a bummer since this is a vacation. Another bummer is that I had the snuffles – a serious medical condition. We woke up a little before 6 so I could see if I felt well enough to go; not wanting to sit around a day in Santa Marta, I decided I felt up for it. We had packed only the bare necessities for the next couple days – a couple days of clothes, swimsuits, snorkel gear, camera, food and water – and left the rest of our gear at the hostel in storage. We hopped in a taxi for the bus station, which isn’t actually a station, but more of an insane intersection where there is chaos with some buses in the vicinity. We looked around for a/our bus, and, per usual, since we were gringos standing still we were approached by a handful of people in the first 5 seconds, but one of them was saying “Tayrona?” so we followed him.
We got on a very old bus that frankly didn’t look highway worthy, and fortunately they didn’t wait around for a full bus, but started driving with only a handful of people on. Plenty of room for us to spread out! We’d been driving for nearly a full minute when we stopped – well, slowed – for another couple passengers to jump on. We repeated this stunt, never really fully stopping, but rarely getting up to full speed (which was evidently like 20 MPH) for a solid 30 minutes until we got out of Santa Marta. Once we got out of Santa Marta we only stopped only like every 2 minutes for new passengers, and despite not having room for them, they piled on to our janky bus. The ride was… bumpy. I couldn’t tell if it was the road itself, which was decent once we were out of Santa Marta (except that every tiny village had 9 or 10 speed bumps, and the villages were frequent), or if it was the fact that the bus didn’t have any suspension at all. I think both. After a little over an hour of bus fun, we finally came upon a village where the bus fully stopped. The bus organizer guy pointed at us, the only white people on the bus, so we figured it was our stop. We payed about 2 dollars and hopped out, and the bus sped away. We were pretty glad to see some signs and what looked like an entrance to the park nearby.
We went over the gate and in a fairly easy process by Colombian standards, got our park wristbands, a map, and entered the park! The trailhead was a couple miles into the park, so we got on a little shuttle van with some other humans and took the easy way in. After a brief shuttle in, we applied our sunscreen and bug spray, and put on our packs. Our packs were really heavy. I had a 2 gallon jug of water in mine, and Meg had most of the food in her daypack. The hike started off very flat, and right away we saw a group of howler monkeys! They were way up in the trees, yelling at each other I think, so after watching them for a few minutes, we resumed the hike. The first bit of the hike in was on a boardwalk which was incredibly nice by Colombian standards, and they even had stairs for most of the elevation change. The walk quickly became rigorous with little flat ground, and each step up became a leg press. Sweating buckets, we were happy to come across a viewpoint with a shelter and a man selling popsicles. We gladly dropped our packs and slurp-slurp-slurped that goodness up before it melted. We descended from the hilly jungle onto a flat, sandy trail, happy about the change despite wearing sandals. Most of the hike was shaded, but when we emerged from the tree cover we could feel our skin getting torched quickly. We hiked for a good hour north towards our beach, and passed through a couple other campsites along the way. At one point, however, we noticed there weren’t any other hikers on our trail like before, so I decided to turn around. We quickly ran into a dude and some tourist riding horses, and the guide informed us that we were on the path to Cabo San Juan. This was technically true, but we were on the horse trail and I don’t have hooves. But it was fine, just longer and hillier, but not wanting to backtrack, we pushed on and eventually made it!
We made it in by 11 – success! We got in line at a hut to reserve our beds – our options for sleeping were tent or hammock; wary of sleeping in hammocks, we were going to grab a tent, but some wise people behind us told us that they have mattresses that have likely never been cleaned, and therefore smelled like dogshit. Thank you nice people! So we asked for hammocks. Meghann remembered that a girl we met in Bogota recommended that we stay in the hammocks “up top”, not what the lady was going to give us for some reason, but she had 2 left wherever “up top” was, and they were ours!
So it turns out that there were hammocks down by the jungle, removed from the beach and likely sweltering, and hammocks in a small hut/gazebo-like spot sitting perched atop a small hill of rocks jutting out from the beach.
We walked our bags up to the hut and found our hammocks and our hammock neighbor – a Londoner called Jack!
The hut was fairly dense with hammocks, only a couple feet in between each one, but boy oh boy did it have a gorgeous view!
We settled in and chatted with Jack while we tolerated the lunch we brought with us. Actually, it was not too bad, I had a few tuna wraps, and Meg made ham and cheese wraps for herself. They were definitely more soggy than we’d like, but we had worked up an appetite hiking so they were gone in no time. We also brought in a bunch of pineapple that was a nice dessert! Next up – beach time!! We found a coveted spot in the shade of a palm tree near the water where we relaxed and read our books for a while.
I got a little restless and made Meg play frisbee with me for a while after that. We were feeling pretty exhausted after the long day and hoping it was dinner time soon, but it was like 2 PM, so we got the cribbage board and a couple of cold beers while we passed the time with cribbage. It was a tight best-of-three series, but with a familiar outcome: Ben-2 Meg-1. After cribbage we retreated back to the hut and lay in our hammocks and chatted with Jack for a while. We had the rest of our mushy wraps for dinner with a bit a pineapple and some carrots – not quite a Michelin-worthy meal, but it sufficed. We passed our in our hammocks while reading with our headlamps, and woke up at some point to brush our teeth.
The hammock sleeping wasn’t really bad! It was nice and cool up in the hut and a breeze kept the mosquitoes away. The breeze grew throughout the night, and around 3 AM became a strong gale. We were sleeping in full clothes to keep warm, but I had to wrap my feet in my towel to keep them warm!
End of D19 cribbage score: Ben 39 (5 skunks) – Meg 26 (6 skunks)
We were sleeping in the hammocks with eyemasks since the sun rose a little before 6 AM, right in our faces. I randomly woke up around 5:45 to a breathtaking sunrise view. I popped my earplugs out and listened to the waves crashing while I watched the sun crawl over the horizon.
The solitude and the colors were simply unreal! Then I put my sleep protection back on and slept for a few more hours. We woke up for good around 8 to a gorgeous day.
With no plans on the day, we read in our hammocks for a while and had some hardboiled eggs and PB&J for breakfast. Jack was just waking up too, so after a lazy hour we decided to hike over the next beach, La Piscina, for some beach time and snorkeling. Most beaches at Tayrona aren’t swimmable due to very strong riptides, but Cabo San Juan and La Piscina both had a breakwater about a hundred yards offshore, making the water in between very calm. The hike to La Piscina was quite short as we actually found the correct path. The beach was quite a bit larger than Cabo San Juan, and much less crowded so we found a nice spot and read in the sun for a while, but then I got bored. We took the snorkels out – there were some patches of grass with some pretty fish in the shallow, sandy water. We swam around and I spotted a sea turtle! We approached him and he swam away, but we caught up with him a few minutes later and he let us get quite close and trail him for a while! Quite a neat experience. Meghann then returned to shore and lent her snorkel gear to Jack, and Jack and I snorkeled around for another hour, but we didn’t find the turtle again.
We had quite the nice frisbee session - the beach had a little sandy drop off where the waves crashed, so if you floated the disc nicely over that spot, it was perfect for a diving grab. The sun was high and it was getting really hot – this beach offered no shade – so Meg and I decided to hike back. Back at the hut we saw that the other 12 hammockers beside Meg, Jack and I had cleared out, and there were two new girls next to us! We talked to Canadians Steph and Michelle for a while.
They were super cool and we traded travel stories with them for quite a while – Steph gave us some pretty stellar recommendations for Vietnam including where to get dope shark shirts custom made! We played a bit more frisbee on the beach, then went and played a best-of-seven cribbage marathon that would go down as a massive upset, with Meghann upsetting the favorite 4 games to 3.
We headed back up to the hut to chill before dinner and shot the shit with Jack, Steph and Michelle until the restaurant on the beach opened. At 7 we headed down to the beach and the five of us got a table and ordered some decent food there, I had creole shrimp and Meg had a chicken platter. We had some beers with our friends and played a few games of bullshit. I caught Meg pretty much every time she lied, and Jack took the entire first game to figure out that you have play the cards in ascending order, not randomly. Steph and Michelle won the two games, the scoundrels. The long days under the sun had apparently really worn us down so we went to hammock around 10. It didn’t get very windy that night though, and we slept very well!
End of D20 cribbage score: Ben 42 (5 skunks) – Meg 30 (6 skunks)
We got up around 8 today and ate whatever food remained – PB&J wraps. Stellar. We played a bit of morning frisbee on the beach, which we had to ourselves since the morning hikers wouldn’t make it to Cabo until at least 10.
We loaded our packs up, much much easier without the food and 2 gallons of water – mine felt like nothing – it was so nice. We said goodbye to our friends and found the correct trail this time! Unlike the horse path which took us up through the foothills, this was a much prettier walk along the beaches.
After an hour of beach walking we came upon a little stand selling a variety of breads and we snagged a tropical fruit filled treat. Later on our walk we saw a huge caiman basking in the sun, then a few different groups of monkeys! We watched the monkeys climb through the trees right over us.
One of them stopped a few feet above me and gave me a puzzled look before it climbed on by. Monkeys. We finally made it back to the trailhead, took a shuttle to the park entrance and hopped on a bus back to Santa Marta.
Back at the Santa Marta bus stop we hoofed it over to the restaurant dis
trict and had some coffee and snacks in a cool coffee shop while Meghann took all the good cards in cribbage, not allowing me to win like I had planned. We got a cab back to Rodadero to Calle 11 hostel where our bags were stashed. We each took a fantastic shower back at the hostel, our first in a while, then wandered the streets near the hostel in search of a laundry mart. We found one, dropped our laundry off, checked out some shops near the beach, went back to the hostel for a swim in the pool, then picked up our fresh and folded laundry!
With clean clothes we went to a food market – like an outdoor local food court where Meg had enchiladas while I was presented with a massive, enormous burger.
It was phenomenal and delicious but sweet jesus it was huge! The amount of meat threw off the meat-to-bun ratio, but I still enjoyed the shit out of it. I got one game back in cribbage here and we headed back, watched some episodes of something (Star Wars Clone Wars?) I downloaded for offline viewing, and we were asleep quickly.
End of D21 cribbage score: Ben 43 (6 skunks) – Meg 32 (7 skunks)