We made our way up the Caribbean coast of Colombia looking for beach. Maggie was looking forward to clear blue water, and I just wanted to have some time to read. We arrive at a busy intersection in Santa Marta to catch our ‘chicken bus’ (full of locals, stops anywhere, cheap, minor danger of breaking down on every bump in the road) and while I was trying to verify that we had the right bus Mag poked her head into the bus and came back with the consensus that there wasn’t enough room. Chicken buses don’t have compartments under the bus for luggage or cargo, everything gets piled up in the aisle behind the driver. In this case she appeared to be correct because the area behind the driver was packed to the roof with sacks, luggage, a mattress, but no chickens *sadly*. Never one to turn down a fare the bus helper-guy grabbed our backpacks and simply wedged them into the middle of the aisle right next to our seats. Granted this meant that anyone who wanted to pass had to hurdle our bags, but at least we got some seats. 8000 pesos ($4.00 u.s.) and 2 hours later we were almost the only ones left on the bus. The driver pulled over amidst a bunch of stalls on the side of the highway and shouted “Palomino” and motioned for us to get off. ‘Town’ consists mainly of a few restaurants and stores that services long haul truckers to Venezuela and a single gas station. The always handy bus helper-guy pointed down a dusty dirt road and said “playa” and then in a cloud of exhaust the bus was gone.
We wandered down the road for 3 km and eventually came to the beach, this was where the 1st story begins.
Whenever we arrive somewhere without reservations one of us will plop down somewhere (cafe/bar/park bench/shady tree) while the other one has a look at the accommodation options. It never ceases to amaze me to see groups of backpackers trudging from hostel to hostel with their packs on toiling in the heat. It was my turn *again* and Mag hung out under a coconut palm guarding the bags. I checked out all 3 accommodation options in the area and settled on the slightly desperate landlady’s place that also had a kitchen *bonus!* and went to collect Mag. On my way out the door I popped my head into the bathroom to check out the facilities and I noticed a bat hanging from the rafters over the toilet. I pointed this out to the landlady and she let me understand that it was no problem and she would shoo it away. Now I’m willing to let something like that slide once (it’s the jungle after all) but when we returned the bat flew right back into the house, zipped around the kitchen and settled right over the toilet again. The lady was swatting at him with a broom and he deftly flew through the living room and out the front door. He sure knew his way around. Mag and I didn’t even have time to take off our packs before he was back hanging above the toilet again. Needless to say we didn’t stay there for the week.
Story number 2
I am a huge fan of tubing. Where I’m from in Texas it is a very serious pastime, and much time in the summer is devoted to floating down rivers in innertubes and drinking beer. The perfect activity for the football offseason, and you even get bonus ‘spending time in nature’ points. Palomino is framed by 2 rivers that flow down from the Sierra Nevada mountains and when I heard that you could go tubing there I got very excited. Tubing in Colombia isn’t quite as sophisticated as it is in Texas, there are no busses to take you to your destination, there are no cooler tubes full of beer, there are no shacks on the side of the river to sell you more beer. What there is though is jungle. To go tubing in Palomino you head to the largest hostel where they will call you a motorcycle taxi and let you borrow one of their tubes. For 15,000 pesos you hop on the back of a motorcycle, hanging on to your tube and ride up a mountain. It is probably one of the stupider things we have done on the trip, but… tubing! …. after a 30 minute ride through the jungle on an underpowered motorcycle, and through rocky creek beds, and over a bumpy, sandy, dusty, road err trail the taxis could go no further. We payed the men and proceeded to hike for 45 min with our tubes further into the mountains. We were so far back that at one point we could see snow covered peaks. It was gorgeous. We came back down to the river and hopped right in. The water was clear with a slightly green tinge, and pretty quickly moving most of the time. It was about 2 – 4 feet deep and pretty wide, ideal tubing conditions (if only we had brought some beer). For the next 2 hours we drifted downstream listening to the exotic birds in the trees, dodging figs that were dropping into the river and marveling at the scenery. As we neared town we started to see more people using the river to fish and do laundry. At one point there were a bunch of locals chasing something around in a shallow part of the river. The kids were squealing and running from it and the adults were trying to head it off and catch it. My first thought was, “Holy crap we’ve been tubing in crocodile infested waters” but one of the men reached out and grabbed it by the tail and held up a huge iguana. I have no doubt that there were dangerous snakes and probably other things in the water, but ignorance is bliss and I’m glad we didn’t see anything dangerous. At the end the river narrows and we were at last swept into the sea amidst flocks of birds and the crash of waves. It was a great day and one that I will remember for a long long time.
Carpe Mundum 