So that was the shortest food obsession ever. No mas arepas for me. I guess that’s what I get for thinking I have an iron clad stomach, resistant even to teenage mutant ninja parasites. I was in the tiniest town a few days ago and saw this sign and just couldn’t resist. I wanted the one that looked like shredded meat but got some weird concoction of ham salad and chunks of carne smothered in ketchup. It was nasty but I had a similar arepa in Morristown so I’m sure it was delicious if that’s your cup of tea. Now I’m not sure if it was that or the Seafood Pad Thai I had when I arrived back in Cartagena but I was violently ill all day. Thankfully my baby volcano trip was cancelled because I would have went and it would have been ugly.
Let me back up a few days…this is what I started writing last Monday…
It’s pretty easy to get around here and I haven’t been speaking much English either. Heading to Parque Tayrona now, around 5 hours from Cartagena and thought I’d have to switch in Santa Marta but lucked out with direct service. There’s a bus company called MarSol and they have a service called puerta a puerta that brings you from your original hotel to your destination hotel. In practice they seem to drop you off somewhere around your hotel. Anyway, hopped in a taxi to their office since no one seems to know the street my hotel is on even when I describe that it’s behind the archbishop. Taxis are so cheap here, and I think safe, and prices seem to be regulated too.
So I spent 5 hours yapping away to Giovanni, an adorable young Colombian man on his way to spend a few days hiking and hammocking in la naturaleza. Actually he did most of the yapping and I did most of the not understanding. He’s a city planner, I think, who was a political science major and studied in France and Switzerland, very well travelled, I’m thinking maybe around 29, could be older I couldn’t tell, and he had the most unusual colored eyes. I’ve seen a lot of men with these intense green yellow beige gold-speckled eyes. They freak me out a little but I can’t stop looking at them. We talked about travel, nature, Colombia, made fun of Trump, the upcoming elections for governor and how one of the candidates looks like John Malkovich, mental health, yoga, and he accidentally insulted another traveller on the bus when he dissed Taganga, a crunchy backpacker hangout in the park.
When we got to the park he went off to sleep with mosquitoes in a hammock and I went off to my cushy air conditioned nature bungalow at Villa Maria. In hindsight I am SO FREAKIN’ HAPPY I didn’t let hippie Tricia make accommodation decisions because I would have been miserable sleeping in a hammock with a bunch of 25 year olds after that El Pueblito hike.
El Pueblito is a tiny indigenous village in Parque Tayrona that also sports some pre-Colombian ruins, so of course that’s the hike I wanted to do. I read it was strenuous but not technically difficult but all the hotel guys kept saying the hike up to the village and down to the beach was brutal. I dunno I was going to give it a shot. Despite being the hottest I have ever been the trail up wasn’t bad at all. Ups downs and nice plateaus, and beautiful views. Going down was another story. It was all boulders, some quite sheer and steep that I would just sit and try to shimmy down without gaining the kind of speed that would catapult me into a Colombian hospital. I met a few other hikers and one guy on one particularly steep boulder went ahead of me to hold my knees as I slid down. Brave man. Then I met a few hikers coming up. I felt really bad for them. One poor Irish guy looked like his head was going to explode. I was never happier to arrive somewhere.
The beach was gorgeous. El Cabo San Juan. Wild and secluded and as I was sitting eating a rather bland lunch, Giovanni popped up out of nowhere! He was moving hammocks and hiked there from wherever he spent the last night. He got a spot on a hill overlooking the bay, which looked quite magical, but adios muchacho, I cannot wait to get back and lay in my hammock on my deck overlooking the jungle and sea and then sleeping in blissful aircon comfort!
So I had a few choices to get back…hike the way I came (ummm hell no!) hike another way to the parking station and get a ride from someone out of the park, or take a horse. I took a horse. His name was Bobo. I forgot the last time I was on a horse was in Costa Rica and his name was Pepperoni and he was an asshole. I also forgot I don’t like riding horses, they don’t listen to me, so I must have been pretty damned exhausted to get up on Bobo. I’m sure one of the other riders got a great shot of the handler using both hands to push my ass up onto the saddle. After a few minutes of trotting, I was like “Wait, am I on a horse?”
