Northern Colombia – Santa Marta, Minca, Palomino & Tayrona National Park

Monday night (June 15th) Sar finally arrived from Australia… I’ve been waiting months for her to get her butt over here. We met her at the Bogota Airport at 10pm, and headed back to our hostel for a rest after her 32 hour journey to us. The next day we hopped on a flight to Santa Marta, a city on the Caribbean coast in the north of the country. 

We landed in Santa Marta and headed for our hostel, Masaya. This is an awesome hostel with 2 pools, super clean bathrooms and some super friendly staff. We had a couple of problems with not having lockers (in a room that had been broken into the night before) and a few unfriendly staff members, but for the most part it was a good place to stay. And their mojitos were unbeatable.

From Santa Marta we headed out on a day trip to Minca.
 
MINCA

In Minca we visited a coffee plantation; La Vittoria, visited a waterfall with a small but fun rock jump and checked out a restaurant surrounded by loads of tiny hummingbirds.

The day was awesome and our only regret is that we didn’t spend a night in Minca.. nonetheless Palomino and Tayrona were calling.

PALOMINO

The next day we jumped on a 2 or so hour bus from Santa Marta to Palomino. We arrived, turned towards the ocean, walked for 15 minutes or so and found The Dreamer Hostel. We checked in, dropped our belongings and dived in the pool. The hostel grounds are really nice, complete with a restaurant and bar. 

The next day we hired tubes, jumped on the back of a couple of motorbikes and headed to the river with a few people from hostel. We unfortunately didn’t have our camera with us however it was awesome. Picture Jurassic Park (with less dinosaurs), a wide and very slow moving river, cervezas and some seriously strong sun. From town you pay a guy to take you to the river, walk up a path (quite steep but nothing unreasonable) jump in the river and float down for around 3 hours. Don’t get the wrong idea.. this isn’t extreme tubing, it’s much the same to being in the bath tub.. but with 10 people and more beer.. depending on what bath time is like at your house.

The next day we hopped on the bus bright ‘n’ early and headed for Tayrona National Park.

TAYRONA NATIONAL PARK

After driving at the entrance to Tayrona we paid our fees (roughly $20AUD) and begun the walk to Cabo San Juan, the 3rd beach campsite. It was totally worth it and took us less than an hour and a half.

The beach at Tayrona was the nicest we saw on the coast in Colombia (until we got to Capurgana and Sapzurro). We were lucky enough to stay in hammocks in the hut overlooking the water.

That afternoon we lazed around, read our books and enjoyed our surroundings. After a mostly good sleep in the hammocks we got up early and headed back to the entrance before jumping on a bus back to Santa Marta.

Next stop Cartagena!