Our shuttle took us four hours northwest, up the Carribean Coast to the fast-paced city of Santa Marta. While there isn’t much to see in the city, it served as our launching point for a trip to the most popular national park in Colombia, the jungle beaches of Parque Tayrona.

Getting to the beach in the park wasn’t easy. Our day started with a 45-minute shuttle to the park entrance. After watching a required orientation video (in spanish), followed by an informational lecture by a park guide (in spanish), we were finally able to buy our tickets into the park. Another quick shuttle ride took us to the end of the road in the park, where we began our two hour hike to the beach. We brought a minimum amount of clothes and camping supplies for two nights, just one big backpack plus two small daypacks. Nonetheless, it was a gruelling hike due to the extreme heat and jungle humidity.

The trail traversed giant boulders, with vines hanging from trees like a Tarzan movie, and eventually opened up to views of isolated, sandy beaches without a single person in sight. We took periodic, somewhat involuntary breaks to take off our backpacks, drink water, and try to cool down in shady spots. As luck would have it, we came to a clearing in the jungle where a random colombian guy (amazingly dressed in slacks and a polo shirt) was selling ice cream bars from a cooler filled with dry ice.

Just before reaching our destination beach, Cabo, a group of tiny monkeys jumped through the trees over the trail right above our heads.

When we reached Cabo, we payed for a camping spot and set up our tent in a grassy area under the shade of a palm tree. Then, we headed straight for the water. The Cabo beach is a small encampment of long, thatched-roofed covered areas, flanking a horseshoe-shaped beach with blue-green water and soft tan sand. The water was cool and felt spectacular after our sweaty hike through the jungle. We played in the waves for a couple hours, then grabbed lunch from a rudimentary restaurant only steps from the water. Given the isolated environment, the food was surprisingly good: sort of a rice vegetable casserole with a side of fries.

We got back in the water and stayed in until nightfall, just after 6pm.

Sleeping in our tent that night was far from ideal. The heat and humidity was suppressing. By 7am the next day, our tent had heated up to the point where we had to escape back to the water. After an hour or so, we got out and hiked back along a short trail to visit a nearby beach that was completely empty. There, we had some apples and breakfast bars and spent some time watching crabs ducking into their holes near where the jungle met the sand. Eventually, a few other people showed up and we decided to head back to the beach near our campground.

Our plan had been to spend one more night in Cabo and then retrace our hike back to the entrance of the park, but the prospect of another hot night in the tent followed by the extruciating hike through the jungle made us reconsider. Luckily, we were able to book a ride on a small boat at 4:30pm back to the fishing village of Taganga, where we could taxi back to our hostel in Santa Marta.

The boat ride was an adventure in itself (see video below). They crammed about 30 people onto benches flanking the sides of the open-air, janky boat, and loaded everyone’s bags into a small compartment in the front. My seat had the unfortunate “extra” of five large plastic gas cans stored at my feet, their caps sealed with produce bags from a grocery store.

The boat was very fast, but the ocean swells were sizeable, and the boat slammed up and down as we made our way along the rocky coastline. After a couple stops at small beach villages, where they amazingly fit several additional passengers on board, we finally arrived at Taganga. A short taxi ride later, we were back in our air-conditioned room in Santa Marta.

We grabbed some food, did some laundry in our sink and hung it in our room to dry, and hit the hay. The next day we stayed in our room until it was time to head to the terminal for an overnight bus south into the Andes, to the small city of San Gil.

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