Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, Colombia

Two posts in one day? Aren’t you all so lucky! I am going to try and get a little closer to posting these without being weeks behind, so two posts today is my first attempt at getting caught up.

Boy oh boy do we have a lot to cover. Epic highs and epic lows. We left our hostel in SM and then went to the Public Market to catch a bus to our next hostel. It was 8K COP to take the bus vs 130K to take a taxi. We thought it would be chill, but it was so hot once again. When will we learn? The thing is we already did we just wanted to save some money. We got off the bus around the area it seemed our hostel was located. The spot was right but also wrong.

We had to walk about 15 – 20 minutes to get to the hostel. We could’ve taken a motor bike but seemed difficult with all our bags. After our short hike, sweaty and tired, we arrived at The Valley Tayrona. We really were in the jungle at this point. It was so pretty I forgot I was sweating (not at all but pretend). Each dorm is constructed by bamboo and wood and stacked on top of each other. I liked how they didn’t destroy the land in order to create the hostel.

We were thinking of doing a hike both days we were there, but some random dutch guys convinced us to camp overnight in the national park. The three of us, plus our friend Thomas that we made when trying to find the hostel, decided we would do it. Funny enough, Thomas is from the same town as the dutch guys, Utrecht, but they had never met. The guys said they booked a campsight at Cabo San Juan, and they got to the park around 13:00 on a Thursday. We went the next day at 11:00 (on a Friday) and they were ALL booked up.

We were told by the people we could book another campsite that was super close to a different beach, so we said fuck it let’s give it a go. When we got in we realized how silly of a choice that was. We were about a 45 minute walk to Cabo San Juan, 30 minutes to Picina, and 20 to Ariella (sp). We were 5 minutes to a beach, but that beach was closed. We played ourselves. A lot of them were closed because the waves were too wild. Distance and exhaustion aside, we did walk 27000+ steps over the two days we were in there. The hike itself took an hour or two, we got some arepas, watched the sunset while drinking a beer, saw a storm roll in and absolutely drench us, and played some cards. I saw lightening strike the closest to me ever in my life. The thunder was 0 seconds behind the lightening. At that point we decided to head back to our campsite.

What a hilarious campsite. Fyre festival vibes. In the morning, when asked how he was feeling, our buddy Thomas said, “depression?” No it wasn’t nearly that bad but it was such an experience. We woke up at 4:45 and made a race for Cabo San Juan to see the sunrise. It wasn’t even that bad of a wake up because we just wanted to get out of the tent. We walked as fast as we could, but missed the beginning, barely. It was still so gorgeous. While I was the sweatiest I’ve ever been, I didn’t let that distract me too much from the view. We stayed for about an hour just calming our hearts and cooling off a bit before we parted ways with Thomas. He wanted to walk the rest of the national park. I could not have done that if I wanted to. I had too much going wrong for me, heat rash, tummy aches, etc. No one else in the group piped up that they wanted to though, so the three of us headed back the way we came.

It wasn’t all bad though, please don’t worry. Hanging out at the beach all afternoon the day before was so lovely and relaxing. I was just floating out at sea (not even close to that far from shore) and looking, pondering life, writing stories, the usual. I love the Caribbean Sea! I also was able to read half of my second book while chilling in the tent trying to get tired at 21:00. There is also some sort of beach vball league that plays in the national park, which is definitely something Shouyou would have done – hiked a brutal hike for 2 hours, just to then start practice.

Perhaps the coolest bit of it was that we saw all three types of monkeys that live in the park. Yes, we even saw the mono titis! Then, back at the hostel, we saw SO MANY more mono titis. Cracked me up because every website says how rare it is to see them, and we saw so many. It’s our welcoming auras, no doubt.

Walking through the jungle that first day, we could hear the sounds of the ocean in the distance and it soothed me as we trudged along. Thomas commented on how nature is always so symmetric and beautiful. We saw that in full force on our walk. They had these wooden paths constructed for us in there and it kept our feet feather light. It’s best to be quiet on the hike so you can try not to disturb nature, as well as get a better chance to see the animals. Someone told us there was a special tree, Higuerilla. Not sure if that is the name of the tree itself, or a plant, or just what something near the tree is called? Either way, I wrote that in my notes to mention, so now y’all know what I know.

We then took a moto back to The Valley, instead of walking back. We walked there, but were a bit too pooped to walk back. The only other thing we really did at the Valley was make some new friends, and have a hilarious attempt at a margarita. Great drink, it just was not a margarita. Our new friends were from Germany, US, Samana, DR, and Milan. The person from the DR told us some cool places to go if we ever visit: Las Galeras and El Valle. The guys we met from Milan said a fun place to go would be Lerici, Italy. Start planning your trips!

Tayrona was definitely a funny experience, but it was also so worth it. Just refuse to stay in the park unless you stay at the Cabo San Juan campsite. That’s my two cents. Tata!