After a bit of a party weekend in Taganga, it was time to move back to Santa Marta. But I like to change this up a bit. after a day of just chilling, I decided to go out to Parque Tyrona for a night (Tuesday - Wednesday).
Tuesday came and I went with two friends to get the bus to Tyrona, they were going a little further n to Los Angeles beach. The bus out to Tyrona was4K and took about 45 minutes. Then you walk up a little hill pay the National Park entrance (for foreigners - 34k, where Colombians pay like 12k) and get a taxi (2k) to the trail-heads. There are two trails - the normal foot path that heads to the eastern most beach or the horse path that bypasses a large part of the beach walk. You see the best beach is the western most one and there are places to sleep there.
So of course you know what trail I took (hint I started the walk a little late...). Plus I figured the horse trail would be a bit shorter, which it was. But unfortunately since the horses use it to carry people (for a price) and supplies in, it was all most entirely mud... and not just mud but that special mud that is on horse trails...
I was walking with an American girl who showed up at the entrance the same time as I did. It was good to have someone along since we only ran into about 3 people over the next 2 hours. So we walked and walked, many times with mud up to my ankles and often higher. Unfortunately if you have ever walked though mud like that, its almost impossible to do it in sandals... So I did the walk barefoot...
Eventually we got to the beaches and had to walk over hot sand then back into the forest, over mud climb some rocks, back to the beach and so on and so forth. After a few hours we emerged at Cabo San Juan. It is a beautiful beach with a small campground and hammocks. You can actually rent hammocks on a cabana on a rock outcropping but they are a bit more (25k as opposed to 20k). there really isn't much to do out there. Chill on the beach, snorkel a bit and just hang out. I met some others that I have run into along the way. We watched the sunset over the mountains and played some cards into the night.
The next day I got up early (5am) for the sunrise. I climbed some rocks nearby to take photos. Then spent the day hanging out on the beach. At about 1 I started the walk back. You can get a boat to Taganga but its about 35-40k and I didn't have that much. We took the beach trail this time and it is a bit longer and in the scorching sun. We hit the forest section of the trail hoping for
less mud but were disappointed as there was almost the same. The forest seemed like it had it out for us. The trees would break sometimes if you used them to help you through the mud, at times the trail would disappear into a 10 foot wide mud of pit and once a huge grasshopper (about 4 inches long) actually hit me in the face and cut me?!
Eventually we made it out and then had to walk to the gates. The taxis were happy to take us back but not to get the bus, they wanted to change an inflated price to take us all the way back to the city, so we walked the 5ks out of the park to the road... All in all a great time, long walk and hopefully a decent training for the Ciudad Perdida trek next week. So it was back to La Brisa Loca and Santa Marta.
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