El viaje

Having finished the blog and all the emails we felt good about ourselves . With the intention to tackle things a bit more thoughtfully from now on we headed south east.

The Sierra Nevada National Park is massive, it encompasses about 17,000 square kilometers and serves as the source of 36 rivers.

We abandoned our plan to go and see the Ciduad Perdida for 2 reasons. Firstly it really just rains like crazy every day. Secondly we found out that there is some kind of catholic holiday this week and it seems that half of Colombia is here on the north coast this week. So heading up there in the heavy rains with masses of other tourist for 4 days is not our idea of a fun time.

Also there is millions of other things to do and discover so we decided to visit the Minca waterfalls that are located just an hour south of Santa Marta at the entrance of the park.

As soon as we started heading up the mountains into the thick jungle the heavy rains started again.

We do not know how the iphone does it but for some reason you never seem to see the rain on pictures. Good on the one hand , on the other, slightly annoying, since you do not really get a good sense of how much of a tough time we are having here 😉

Upon arriving in Minca , you are being told that you cannot go up to the waterfalls yourself, you should not drive up the shitty roads and you better pay a guide.

So up the road we drove for a while before realizing that at least the second piece of advise was a good one. So we left the car on the side of the road and headed up a muddy dirt road by food.Armed with a plastic bag for our phones, flip flops,a bikini and some swimshorts. Everyone who saw us on the way either thought we had just escaped a mental institution or casually just looked the other way. Here you do get a good sense of the madness , less so of the rain that was constantly pouring down at every stage of our climb.

There is many small trails leading off the road and after around an hour or so we decided to just take one of them since we heard water splashing in the distance.

After fighting our way through these rocky riverbeds we finally came to a tiny waterfall which, we discovered afterwards, could have been reached by a 1 minute trek from further up to road. So obviously there were other people…

But as we all know by now: Der Weg ist das Ziel!

Lu hates it when i translate in a literal way (and rightfully so). But if i would not have done it this time , i could not claim my latest discovery.

So in English it literally means: “The way is the goal” if you would represent the exact words. Which if you take it one step further metaphorically becomes: “ The journey is the destination”

When you do the same in Spanish , on the second step you get to: “ El viaje es la destinación “

Which of course is all totally incorrect but what i discovered, while playing around in my head with this, is that destination —> destiny or destinación —> destino.

It took me 40 years to figure this out… I might just be dim witted or never really though about it before, but as you can probably tell, i am well happy about this 🙂

Back to the climb, so we continued up the road for a while. Higher up we got a nice panoramic views of the thick surrounding jungle.

To my delight we also found a tiny coffee field tucked below the jungle canopy.

We totally lost track of time and slowly but surely were getting tired and cold. It was quite windy up there and the constant rain didnt really help. Luckly after finally taking the right turn we got to where we wanted to be.

Less impressive and much colder compared to the ones we saw in Chiapas but : Der Weg ist el destino , you know..

Realizing that we have been climbing for 4 hours and frozen by now we hitched a sketchy ride with two locals on the back of their crossbikes back down to our car.

And had one of the best snacks of our lives.

Back to the ,by now completely flooded, Santa Marta.

Early night, happy but very tired campers.