Minca and Tayrona National Park

This past week, my friend AnnMarie and I made a trip through a few of the best parts of the Colombian coast. We spent a night in Taganga, where I ended up playing music again in Mojito Bar, this time with a guitar player from Spain and a piano player who was born in Norway, grew up in the States and now lives in the mountain in Taganga. We ended up putting on quite the show, with everything from blues, to jazz standards, to bossa nova. The following day we headed to Minca, a quiet and beautiful town up in the mountains. My friend Julho, from Brazil, came along for the adventure. At first we couldn´t find a cheap hotel, so we ended up meeting these people who had an abandoned hotel on their property. They agreed to let us stay in one of the rooms for a cheap price, as long as we we out by 8 am. The room was basic, the door didn´t even shut, but the scenery was amazing and the people super friendly.

The following morning we walked downstream and then along a trail that we thought was going to take us to the juncture of a river and a waterfall. In the end, we ended up on a mountain ridge overlooking Santa Marta, a lot of beautiful green mountains and the ocean. Along the way, we gathered a TON of mangos, avocados and ate a cacao fruit. Cacao fruit looks kind of like a squash and inside there is white slimey stuff around the seeds. The seeds are what they take out, roast and grind to make cocoa, or chocolate, but you can also just eat the white slimy stuff and its pretty good.

When we came to the conclusion that we had taken the wrong trail, we turned around, hiked back to town and ate breakfast in the park. Then we started walking on the road towards Pozo Azul. The Pozo Azul wasn´t blue at all, but it was a nice couple of pools and a small waterfall up the river. We all went for a swim in the very cold water!

The next day we took motorcycle taxis down the mountain, Julho returned to Taganga, and AnnMarie and I went to the supermarket to buy food to take to Tayrona Park. We ate lunch and waited for the bus. Unfortunately, all the buses that came by were already full so we had to wait two hours until one arrived. When we finally made it to the park entrance, we found out that the park had closed 45 minutes ago. I told AnnMarie that we would attempt to beg, but as we were walking up, the park official came out and told us to hurry up, that he would let us in. We quickly paid the entrance fee, he put us on two moto taxis and we zipped up the road to the beginning of the trail. It was already getting dark, and mosquito-ey, so we walked quickly towards the beach. We spent two nights sleeping in hammocks in Arrecifes beach. The next day we walked along the beaches and through the jungle and palm coconuts to Cabo de San Juan beach, where I had stayed six years ago and ran into the paramilitaries. The whole park seems totally different now, packed with tents, tourists and vendors... when I was here last, most of the natives had even decided to leave. (The park was closed because of the guerilla and paramilitary action and also due to the fact that the paramilitaries killed the park director´s daughter).

From Cabo de San Juan, we walked up the stone staircase for about an hour to Pueblito ruins. The ruins are over 500 years old and are made up of lots of round terraces, staircases and stone pathways.

The views in the ruins were great, and the hike up and down even allowed the sun to break through in spurts so we could see the view of the ocean and beach far below.