Week Five: Semana Santa, or the Week of Easter

Monday. We bussed two hours to Santa Marta where we purchased hammocks in the market. Santa Marta is the coastal Colombian’s holiday destination hotspot; which doesn’t, however, altogether warrant much space for description. Then a short taxi ride took us to Minka, a tiny place in the mountains, where lies an unusual citing in these parts: a slightly hippy, traveller café, which serves chocolate brownies and café frappes.

The girl in the café said we could put the hammocks up in her garden. She lives with her family in a wooden mountain house and at the bottom of the slope in the garden was a covered wooden patio. We walked to some lagoons with waterfalls and went swimming.



It was bliss when night came, we were blessed with the view of mountains and the twinkling lights in the city far off, until the time came to sleep and the things that go bite in the night came out to taunt us.



Mosquitos bit through the material of the hammock. I could feel pinpricks and poison seeping in through the corner of my eyes and the tips of my fingers. I think this photo of Laura’s leg demonstrates our state by morning.

The Intrepid Explorers
Tuesday. We climbed over 2000m with our packs (reminiscent of World Challenge). Above the cloud, we found San Lorenzo. But, San Lorenzo turned out to be a village with a gate with a lock on it. Confused, yet hopeful, we laboured on until we reached a cell-phone signal tower (the only manmade structure for miles). And just as things were leaning towards the embryonic stages of dismay, a man appeared through the mist. We asked him about accommodation, and he said we could stay with his family. This meant walking more.




The house stood before us like a castle in the clouds on a plot of forestry, surrounded by mountains on all sides. And suddenly, looking at the view of misty cloud at a great height and the forestry below, it had been worth the strain. His wife cooked us a grand meal of rice and eggs and plantain. We played cards with the cousin and then slept, badly, (because it was so cold) in their barn.

Wednesday. The next day their son walked us to a lagoon.
For the way down, he recommended some short-cuts through the jungle, which were reminiscent of Romancing the stone and that movie with Russell Crowe, whilst trying not to remember that this was the last location that tourists were kidnapped by guerrillas in Colombia. (It was in 2003, and now there is a heavy army presence).

Then we returned to Santa Marta to buy some camping supplies for our trip to the nearby Playa Concha with our friends from the café at school in Puerto. We stayed the night in a hostel. It was too hot so I slept badly once again.

Thursday. We bought mosquito nets. Erwin, a chico from the café, telephoned us to say they would be at the beach ahorita.

Ahorita has brought us some amusement since being here. Ahora means NOW. Ahorita, though technically meaning ‘around now’, tends to mean anything between three and seven hours.

Late afternoon we congregated on Playa Concha, where bushy mountains meet white sant and turquoise ocean. A beautiful setting to camp for a few days. However...

Nothing is ever as it seems.

To ask for more would be, it seems, hopelessly Utopian. It was like we had gate-crashed a couples’ weekend.
After the initial alarm we all had a jolly time. When they do camping, they ‘do camping’. This means we ate lots of yummy cooked hot food and had lilos galore.

We erected our hammocks. And for the first time in three days I slept like a baby; cocooned in a wrapping of mosquito net and hammock, with a light sea breeze, that by morning I was almost surprised not to have turned into a butterfly.

I have made the decision to toodle onward with Alex and Laura when they leave next monday, in search of different climes and modern times.
Puerto's done good by me and I've enjoyed being here mucho, but I’ve been a bit shy of my family since they asked me to borrow large amounts of money.

Apparently Cali, famous for its plastic surgery, has the most bum-implants in the world. Maybe I’ll go there…
I will visit some ex-student friends of mine in Medellin and Bogota and see where the wind blows me.