I had a very interesting conversation with the Spanish guy on the bus. He has been travelling for five months now and.... he hates it. Before, he was always doing voluntary or paid work while travelling, on this trip he feels he is wasting time and he is not productive. He will be back in Europe next week and he can't wait to start working. I felt the same in Brazil for the first two months - that I was wasting my time. As soon as I got to the Amazon forest and to Venezuela, I started learning so much that I didn't think the same any more.
Tayrona Park is amazing, it is jungle with many exotic types of trees and plants. It was raining a day before so to get to the campsite we had to walk for more than two hours, in the mud..... getting dirty was so much fun!! :)) Everything was nice apart from horses. There are many of them as some people prefer to ride a horse instead of walking, so it became a business for the local people. The horses' excrement was everywhere and the smell was not good either. I think it spoils a lot the beauty of the jungle. However, we had a lot of fun when we arrived in the campsite - after fixing tents we ran into the sea, it was fantastic. There were big rocks around and the water was crystal clear. When Jose' arrived in the evening, I went swimming with him again. It was already dark so we took off our clothes and we swam naked for about two hours. It was great but... suddenly the police appeared and they asked Jose' to go out. He did, covering some parts of his body with hands and he was talking to the police officers for about 15 minutes. They searched pockets of our clothes for drugs. I got really scared for a moment because I suddenly remembered two other people walking on the beach before the police came. I thought that maybe they had put drugs in our clothes and that we were in a big trouble, and that we would be arrested....
I was wrong, they found nothing and they left. Jose' was angry that the police had to show off their control over everything. However later somebody told me that many people died in these waters as there are very strong currents which come unexpectedly and they carry you far away. So the police is there to protect you, not to arrest you :)) and that they search for drugs as a routine.
We had a lazy night by the sea. The guys were drinking rum and the Colombian anise aquardiente, I had a beer and I was dancing a little bit. All the lights went off at 11 pm so people went to sleep and it suddenly became very quiet. I went for a walk on my own. I was a little bit upset because everyone was speaking Spanish as they didn't speak any English. They were laughing and I didn't understand why, and I wanted to laugh too. Jose' tried to translate some jokes for me but his English is bad so he was getting tired and I was getting tired of listening to him too. Anyway, thank you for trying, Jose' :)
So I went for a walk and it was wonderful. I climbed a hill in the dark, sat down on a big rock and I was staring into the space. I could see The Guys looking for me on the beach, I was waving but I couldn't shout as people were sleeping in the tents. They were looking for me for a long time so eventually I gave up waving and I went down. They were so relieved to see me!
The night in a tent was a nightmare: if you closed the tent it became stuffy and it was impossible to breath. If you opened the tent, there were hundreds of mosquitos with big smiles on their faces, ready to bite you. It wasn't comfortable either so I only slept for an hour. The next day we were swimming again (it was actually nothing else to do apart from swimming and sleeping) - Jose' and I naked on a beautiful wild beach, joined by the Spanish guy. We got back to Santa Marta yesterday after hours of hiking, I was wonderfully tired... I love these moments when you take shower and you lie down in a comfortable bed. You are so tired that nothing matters, you just wait for the sleep to come (not long of course).
Today, 30th of May 2010, is a very important day for Colombia: elections for a new president.
