The Blaus - South America and Europe

10 de Junio - Santa Marta & Tayrona National Park

We heard about Santa Marta through a fellow traveler, and since we were not in a hurry to leave the Caribbean part of Colombia, we decided to add the small town of Santa Marta to our itinerary. The beaches in Santa Marta were not all that picturesque, but the town (1/3 the population of Cartagena) was a nice change of pace from Cartagena. Santa Marta has a natural bay, which makes it an ideal shipping port. We spent one day exploring the town and beaches nearby and the next day we went to Tayrona National Park.

To avoid an organized tour of Tayrona National Park, we took a local bus to a collectivo (sort of like a carpool), then hiked to the coast through the park. The hike was stunning. We were shaded by the canopy of the dense jungle as we walked along a muddy path, sometimes crossing streams, listening to the cicadas, birds and rustling of the trees. It was hot and humid and we were dripping with sweat, but we had our eyes on the prize, which was the reward of a dip into the ocean at our final destination. There were hundreds of butterflies fluttering around us so quickly that it was difficult to examine their incredible shapes and colors. Some were white with black tips on their wings, some were black and orange striped, some were brown and had wings shaped like a horn. The leaves from the towering trees fell off their branches and floated down through the sweet, heavy air to land gently like butterflies descending. After hiking for an hour, we reached the ocean and we were happy to jump in and cool off. The first beach we arrived at was called Arrecifes and it was practically deserted. Looking inland from the shore yielded an amazing view of this white sand beach with crystal blue water against a backdrop of jungle covered mountains looming above. Here the Sierra Nevada mountain range rises 18,000 feet above the coastline, and during the cooler parts of the year, the mountaintops are covered with snow. The mountains jutting out from the beaches make for a dramatic juxtaposition of nature at her best.

There was a strong current at Arrecifes, so we walked 15 minutes down the beach to a place called La Piscina, which couldn´t have been more like a swimming pool unless the water was chlorinated. It was absolute paradise. There were only a few other people at this beach, so we practically had it to ourselves. It was tranquil and tucked away, like a well kept secret. The waves were kept out of the calm pool by reef that nearly enclosed the small bay, which formed a perfectly circular protected area where we swam and floated on our backs in the warm, turqoise oasis of ocean. We drank water from a coconut and basked in the sun of the beach made of course sand. Before we hiked back, we returned to Arrecifes and played in the waves like children. The sand there was as fine as flour and was the color of salt and pepper. On our hike back we spotted a medium size, furry animal in the brush that we hoped was a capybara (a semi-aquatic rodent of South America that weighs about a hundred pounds and is about 2 feet tall at the shoulder). It ran away quickly, so we didn´t get a good look at it. We were hoping to see monkeys or snakes too, but instead we saw a bunch of kids at a summer camp retreat playing a game in which they ran around in a circle holding hands and singing LA CUCARACHA.

On our last night in Santa Marta, we watched the sunset over the bay. The sun dunked down into the horizon with hundreds of changing colors in the sky as tropical storm clouds moved in and lightning bolts illuminated the ocean below. We sat at the water´s edge drinking tinto and admiring the view.

posted by The Blaus @ 6:27 PM