Month: September 2015

Parque Nacional Tayrona

As Alex described in her previous post we went to Santa Marta with the aim of visiting the Parque Nacional Tayrona. We didn’t really go into this adventure knowing much about the park but it featured in “The Gringo Trail” by Mark Mann, one of the books I read before heading out here, so we thought we go and have a look for ourselves!

After a long sleepless night we headed over to the market to catch our bus. We did have the option of a door to door transfer with our hostel for the equivalent of £4 each but we opted to pay just over £1 for the local bus. It wasn’t really about the money though as we really wanted to see the journey from a more local perspective.

Motivation aside we wound our way through the market area looking for the intersection of Calle 11 and Carrera 11. It all started to feel just a little less salubrious around us and all of a sudden none of the streets were labelled. To cut a long story short we eventually managed to overshoot our destination by a street and by the time we got to the bus we were sweaty and exhausted. Luckily we had a 40 minute bus ride to recover so we set off and kept our eyes peeled for our stop. As it happened our stop was impossible to miss due to the obvious park entrance, the conductor shouting Parque Tayrona at us and all the other Gringos getting off the bus with us.

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Sleepless in Santa Marta

Hi Guys, Alex here, I (well Chris) thought it was about time that I wrote a post so I’m going to cover Santa Marta and Chris will be back to cover Tayrona National Park.

Santa Marta is a city on the Northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, it’s mostly a stop off point for travellers visiting Tayrona but is also a huge holiday destination in it’s own right for many Colombian tourists.

We arrived into the tiny Santa Marta airport right next to the sea and were met by a wall of heat and humidity when stepping off the plane. We grabbed a taxi and headed to our hostel. Along the way the streets looked far more colourful and vibrant than in Bogota with lots of people selling things on the street and a much more casual dress code!

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Baby Steps in Bogota

Our first day in Colombia started slowly. There were a few things bits of admin we needed to urgently sort out that we just hadn’t had time to do in the UK. The other important thing to do was to work out what we’d be doing after Bogota. We were now three nights away from having nothing booked and having no idea what we were doing next. We did some research and came up with a draft itinerary for Columbia:

Bogota (4 nights)
Santa Marta
Tayrona National Park for a night or two exploring and sleeping in a hammock
Cartagena via another night in Santa Marta
Pereira (in the coffee growing region)
Back to Bogota
Ecuador

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So it begins…

We have arrived in Bogota, Colombia. More about that later, I really want to use this post to document some of the fun we had in the week or so prior to our departure.

I had a nicely phased exit from work. Thanks to the Cunningham’s wedding I was able to do a three day week and then finish on a two day week. On the Tuesday night of that second to last week I had a great night out with the work team, followed by the wedding two days later. Finally we had a party in London for friends attended by some of our closest friends from work, university, London and even a few school friends. Even though it was all a bit last minute and hectic, it was a lot of fun spending a few nights surrounded by some of our favourite people. To top it all off I was presented with a huge pile of gifts from my work colleagues including some very useful items (new flip flops, awesome portable BBQ, disposable ponchos, US Dollars) as well as some amusing but slightly less useful gifts (rubber duck, fake moustache etc). That weekend we went up to Nottingham for a leaving party with the family, and to deposit my car safely on Dad’s drive. The party was a roaring success and a great way to see everyone.

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