Beaches and Hammocks

Unfortunately, I'm writing this for the second time, a bit like my postcards (the second attempt) has finally made it to Ireland, it took over a month! The first ones were lost in America. So, after one night in a hammock in Santa Marta, I was done with the place, I just didn't seem to enjoy the vibe from the hostel, I think it was mostly wild rover withdrawals. Anyway myself and Taylor decided it'd be terrible to go to Santa Marta and not at least see some of the city, so we jumped in a taxi and asked to be brought to the centre. We were dropped at the dirty beach and wandered in towards a market we'd driven past. I bought myself a pair of flip flops which were about 3 weeks overdue. We never found the market, but checked out a few shops, a park and for some weird reason a cemetery. We headed for Taganga, a small fishing town the other side of the mountain, known for its cheap scuba diving. A quick search on hostel world I found us a decent looking hostel with a pool. Divanga B&B was lovely, nicest food I've had in Colombia, staff were excellent and the room was awesome, air conditioned an all. We discovered you could get a boat from Taganga to Tayrona national park for 40,000 pesos, bargain we'd skip the 2 hour hike and go straight to chilling on the beach. Tayrona was beautiful, probably the nicest looking, scenic beach I've ever seen.

                                                                        On our way to Tayrona

We slept in hammocks in that hut

                                                                                View of the beach from the hut

There was one restaurant, and this was the only place to get dinner unless you brought your own food with you. The food was decent everybody would get up off the beach and head for dinner, we ended up with our own little family, a Scottish couple, Brendan the photographer and Sarah from London, we had lunch and dinner together both days. Brendan would wander off to get pictures of the sunsets and sunrises each day, so I tagged along with him. I learnt a fair bit about taking pics and modelled in a few pics for him, made it onto his Instagram and may end up on skyscanner.  Two days in Tayrona and we hiked out to the main road only took us just over an hour, jumped on a bus heading to Palamino, we were now three Sarah joined. Again, as we didn't know when we would get to Palamino we'd nothing booked and were just hoping we'd be able to get beds, we were pretty early 1ish and got beds but as we were booking people were being told the place was full so we did well. Got myself a decent pizza. The first nights bar fun was beer pong, I managed to get to the final but we couldn't win it. The next day we decided to go tubing, the main reason I was told to go to Palamino!

                                                                          Loving life on the river

We found a herd of wild horses

We had to get a mototaxi up the mountain, while holding on to our tubes and the bike. it was pretty crazy, and of course I got the lunatic who reckoned he could get two trips in so he went as fast as the bike would let him. we then had to hike for about half an hour to the best part of the river. It was definitely worth it, so peaceful a group of about 10 of us headed off down the river and just relaxed in the sun floating downstream. It was a Saturday, so after the tubing we decided it would be rude not to head out, we got ready, but the two girls were pretty exhausted so gave it a skip. I headed out anyway with a group of people we'd been chatting with all day. It was a great night very different from any night I'd been on. The locals were out and all the restaurants had been turned into late night DJ bars. At the end of the night I adopted a stray dog, fed her and took her back to the hostel with me. I'd also been told Costeno Beach Hostel was meant to be lovely and it was on the way back to Taganga so we decided it'd be nice to stay there for a night or two. We got a bus from Palamino heading for Santa Marta but jumped off outside the Costeno entrance, it was a half hour walk into the hostel. Not that I'm after getting lazy or anything, but it's roasting hot 30+ degrees everyday so walking anywhere in that heat is real hard work. When the three of us got to Costeno beach, we were pretty wrecked but the views were definitely worth it.

 More hammocks on the beach. The bar/restaurant looked out on the ocean, it was a real cool chilled out atmosphere. Like Tayrona we had no choice of where to eat, there was just one restaurant and the choice was 'meat' or 'veggie'. We stayed for two nights, enjoying the calmness of the whole place. I tried a half day of surfing but the waves were very inconsistent and kept dragging you down, so it didn't go fantastically. the first night we had a really cool thunder and lightining storm, which i watched from the hammock. From Costeno we headed back to Taganga where I think I'm going to start my PADI, it's a scuba diving certificate.