Where's Grayleen?

Four idyllic days and nights in Parque Tayrona have left us browner, more relaxed, and with quite a few more bug bites. Parque Tayrona is a Colombian national park on the Caribbean coast with beautiful beaches and lodging in the form of hammocks strung beneath traditional thatched structures. After the hike in through the jungle (following two cab rides, two bus rides, and a jeep ride to get to the park entrance– phew!¹), we quickly found ourselves falling into a pattern: a pre-breakfast dip, breakfast, a couple of hours swimming and reading on the beach, lunch of a small loaf of still-warm pineapple bread from a sweet lady, siesta in our hammocks, another swim, then dinner and hanging out during the nightly thunderstorm until an early bedtime.

A little slice of Colombian heaven

Lest you think we had it too easy, there were a couple of noteworthy events that interrupted our otherwise lazy days.

First, since we are using an old guidebook given to us by our neighbor, we had drastically underestimated how much money we would need. Prices of both food and hammocks had more than quadrupled from those in our guidebook over just a few years. Getting to the nearest ATM would take another few-hour hike, jeep ride, and taxi ride. Not the end of the world, but wasn’t how we wanted to spend a day. We did, however, have some emergency US dollars. While they wouldn’t take our foreign currency, they did say we might have luck at a beach just 45 minutes hike back though the jungle. We decided to wake early and jog over there.

When we got there, sweating and riddled with fresh bug bites, we found someone who would change money, but for the horrendous exhange rate of $1 US to $1.500 COP, a 25% fee. We reluctantly agreed and handed over a $100 bill. He looked at it skeptically and said he had no idea how to tell if it was real and didn’t even know what it should look like. A group of three guys gathered around to look at it, talking rapidly among themselves. Then they brought it over to another guy who was lying in a hammock, smoking and already having his first beer of the day. We watched while the guy took the bill, rubbed the ink and held it to the light, then crumpled it and, oddly, threw it on the floor. After the four of them chatted and laughed for a few more minutes in a circle around the balled-up bill, one picked it up and flattened it back out. Apparently satisfied that it was real, he came over and gave us our $150.000 pesos. Mission accomplished.

Our little hut

Two days later, during dinner on our final night, we had a truly tremendous thunderstorm: people were ducking and even screaming a few times during the incredibly loud thunder and winds that literally sent chairs and even a dinner knife flying. Once the rain died down, we made a run for our hammocks, which were beneath an open hut on a raised outcropping of rock overlooking the sea. Even having seen the ferocity of the storm, we were still astounded to see the damage. Heavy backpacks had literally been thrown from completely soaking-wet hammocks. Clothing that had been hanging had been flung far and wide. Even our backpacks, which were on a table in the very middle of the structure, were quite wet. Gray’s Kindle, previously resting in his hammock, was submerged in a deep puddle on the floor. Fortunately, our computer and camera were in a locker, and I had had my Kindle with me. We relocated to hammocks in a less exposed area. The next morning almost all of our belongings spent several hours lying out in the sun to dry out; with the high humidity, nothing dries without strong direct sunlight. All in all, we are none the worse for the wear, and we are still holding out hope that Gray’s Kindle will revive.

Fishing boats on the shore of Taganga

Yesterday, after one more wonderful morning– we walked 30 minutes to the best and most isolated beach and had it entirely to ourselves for several hours– we took a boat to Taganga, a small fishing village that has become a mecca for backpackers and scuba. We took truly wonderful showers in our hotel room, had delicious fruit smoothies, and went for dinner and drinks with some new Aussie mates² we had met at Tayrona.  Full Tayrona and Taganga album here.  Now we’re busing it back to Cartagena for a bit more of the festival and our flight out to Lima via Bogota.

Gray drinking a pineapple-banana with milk smoothie in Tangana. We each had 4 of these in less than 24 hours!