dontcallitacomeback

bloggy bloo.

so, on christmas day we went to taganga, a fishing village 15 mins away from sta. marta. the ride there was pretty, a camioneta thing took us over a hill and we saw the deep blue bay of taganga from above, set against brown scrubby hills. not bad. when we descended we hopped out of the camioneta, bought a bottle of Medellin Rum, and made for 1 of the 9000 juice stands. in taganga they put lots of ice in their fruit juices which, though refreshing, dilutes the taste somewhat. no matter, we had the rum to make up for that. ant ordered a juice made from grenadina, which is an interesting fruit of pomegranate-like seeds. makes a brown, mildly sweet kind of juice. i stuck with maracuya (passion fruit) - mandarin. we found a table and sat there in our bathing suits for a while, drinking our juice-cum-cocktails and taking pictures. after a while, we decided to go for a swim. the beautiful bay was actually not such a great beach, mainly because it was overrun with urinating children, and there was a supposedly magnificent beach a hike or boat ride away, but we felt lazy and spoiled by all the great beaches we had been spending time at, and opted to run quickly in and out of the urine/saltwater and go eat a christmas lunch of giant fried fish with patacones (tostones at home) and panela (raw sugarcane) rice and beer. it was lovely and followed by more juice. we spent the rest of the day watching people dance drunkenly in the fried fish restaurants and a guy throw up. a nice day in taganga - merry christmas!

after taganga we felt we had had enough of the humidity of the coast and decided to go into the santa martas, the largest coastal mountain range in the world, whatever that means. we had planned to go to this place called minca, which was in lonely planet. but then we found out, through our hostel in santa marta, about this other place in the mountians that is not in lonely planet. seeing as we are making every effort to not use lonely planet (its colombia edition was unforgivably abomidable and misleading. actually, we traded it in for the footprints guide to south america 2006, also pretty bad. there is a serious dearth of decent travel books - somthing must and will be done about this), we opted to go to the other place. which was good. getting there was interesting. since it is not in lonely planet, and therefore not on the lp loop, it gets less tourists than other places, and therefore there is no transportation infastructure. so we took a local bus to a rndom point 20 mins outside of santa marta. we had been told to then round a corner, walk 2 blocks, and look for a taxi stand where we could find a taxi that would take us directly up the mountain to the finca we were staying at. we rounded, walked, but all we found were 2 guys standing in the shade of an overhang with motorcycles propped up against them. we asked them where the taxi stand was and they replied that they were the taxi stand. of course. by this point, i should have known. unfortunately, i hadnt accounted for a motorcycle ride and had brought all of my luggage with me, instead of leaving my bigger backpack at the hotel as i should have done. the "taxi" driver was unphased. i would simply have to wear both bags on the motorcycle, he told me (i tend to travel utter-dork style, with my bigger backpack on my back and my smaller one on my chest. dumb. but i like having my hands free). i really couldnt understand how that would work on a completely uphill ride, with my backpack weighing, well, alot, and having never ridden a motorcycle before, not knowing where exactly to hold on. i envisioned disaster, and convinced the taxista to prop up my bigger bag between the handlebars. not the safest, but better than my other option. and all this sans a helmet. i was glad my mom wasnt there.

the ride turned out to be quite pretty, actually. it was straight up a winding dirt road, but then, what isnt? i didnt fall off, and my bag did only once. after 25 minutes of dirt blowing in my eyes, we stopped in front of this small house. this was our finca. the small family who lived there came out to greet us, sat us down and gave us orange juice. we called after our taxi drivers to please, please come and pick us up 2 days later, in the morning. they nodded unconvincingly and sped away. we shrugged and sat, drinking our tasty juice and sort of shooting the shit with the nice man of the family who sat with us conversationally, but was seemingly too out of it for conversation. after a little while, the family showed us to our room, we dropped our stuff off and set out for a walk.

the surroundings were very beautiful. half a step away was a clear narrow river with a strong current. i know it was strong because i nearly died walking across it repeatedly to get to the other side where there pruportedly was a natural jacuzzi. and there sort of was, except it small pool created by a waterfall splashing down the surrounding high, smooth rocks. it was cold, not hot, but that was fine because it was colombia. we entertained ourselves for three days by sliding down the waterfall and using it as a shower. oh, and drinking strong colombian coffee in hammocks, served to us by the nice family of the finca. yum. truly the antidote to 5 months of nescafe.

so, it was a great time and very beautiful and after 3 days i felt quite ready to leave this nice family and get back to cartagena, where there is a bit more to do. on the morning we were supposed to leave we were ready and waiting for our trusty motorcycles to come and get us and take us down the mountain to civilization (read: juice stands), although i knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that our motorcycles should not be relied on. and i was right. we waited for them for over an hour before accepting the fact that they were not coming and we would have to walk back to santa marta. really, it wasnt as far as it seemed, and it was all downhill, but it was HOT and we had all of our luggage with us. with our backpacks strapped to both sides and no protection from the sun (well, we had caps on) we trudged down the mountain(s?), silently sweating through our shirts. it wasnt all that bad until we got lost at the end. eventually we made it to a main road, and hopped a local camioneta which took us to the santa marta boardwalk where we chugged another juice and crammed into another camioneta, packed beyond maximum capacity, which took us to the bus station where we boarded a big, cold (air conditioned) bus heading back, again, to cartagena....