El viaje

Quick Colombian coffee in the morning

and a quick peak out of our noble suite

It looked a whole lot better the next day. So extremely motivated we headed to next gas station. Quick downer because they explained to us that we can only pay by wire transfer from a Colombian bank.

On reserve we headed to the next City

But before we could enter we had to stop at at railwail crossing for a coming train. Big commotion at that crossing, a lot of gasoline and goats changed their owners.

Then the train came

and kept coming. It was the longest train we have ever seen. It was all black container trailers , each around 40 meters but hundreds of them. Very very long train, it took some minutes to pass…

We got lucky at the ONLY cash machine in town. There was obviously a queue in front of it but it being 8am or so in the morning it was manageable and after around 30-40 minutes waiting we scored some cash. To our delight we could also pay with a card at the local gas station. Delighted but slightly less crazed then the day before we hit the road again.

The area is extremely windy and with very little or no vegetation in place thrash gets blown everywhere. Its is not the prettiest but we had to take pictures because there were entire areas like this , just covered in plastic bags.

But away from the towns the picture is a very different one. We especially loved the local fences

And the further you get north, the more barren it gets.

Until there is absolutely nothing left.

So on we drove!

Originally we did not want to go that far north. Also we knew the closer we get to Venezuela border , the dodgier it gets. But even our fearless captain Hernando advised us not to cross to Venezuela at the moment . Thats a whole different story. Not doing Venezuela is painful, but unfortunately it really is not a good idea at the moment.

Anyway , already being up here though we decided to check out a bay that our good friend from Medellin, la bruja, told us about. So another hour or so up north we got to El Cabo de la Vela. A weird little enclave that now seems to exist only for kiters and masses of traversing buses on their way to the bay.

We obviously stopped after our berserk drive through the sizzling hot desert.

Bought two handwoven bags of the indigenous woman next to me.

And had a quick pina/maracuja smoothie, as any good tourist in the desert should.

The dynamics with the indigenous here are hard to explain as an outsider and even harder to judge. There is a lot of very young kids begging on every corner. You feel bad every time you drive past. But you cant give something to everyone, leading up to El Cabo we must have passed at least a hundred of those kids. Can you blame the parents for letting them beg, are they only begging because outsiders found their way here, or should we just not come at all to these kind of places. Is the way they use emotional blackmail right? But what are they supposed to think of all these fancy cars and the unspeakable riches that are being rubbed under their noses every day? I cannot answer any of these questions. Every single kid we saw left a sour aftertaste.

But the bay was beautiful.

But again, the flipside of it, not so much.

After digging a hole

and a couple of swims we decided it was time to head back.

All the way back to where the vegetation was, we decided in the car.

Up in the Sierra Nevada behind Santa Marta there is a a place called the Lost city. Build by the Tayrona indigenous it is one of the coolest things we can do here. You need at least 3 nights up in the park and it is quite the hike up there.So trying to sort out a trip and conversing with the tour operators while its 40 degrees outside we got that idea stuck into our brains. The tours start from Santa Marta so we had to get back there because the next tour would start tomorrow at 8 am.

It must have been at around the 8th hour in the car, just before the crazy rains and thunderstorms started and our navigation gave us another 2 hours to Santa Marta when we started to abandon our new plan.

But we were stuck in traffic and the thunderstorm got worse and being in the middle of the jungle you cant just stop and get a hotel.

So after 10 tedious hours of driving we finally got into Santa Marta. Hotel for 40 bucks this time and slightly bonkers in the brain.

We realized we need to approach this continent with a tad more planing. We realized we need to keep the blog updated since we will forget all this, quite possibly by tomorrow.

So as we speak , Colombian coffee in the morning, wife emails, Jojo blog, a deep breather and hasta luego!