Santa Marta & Parque Nacional Tayrona

Santa Marta is famous for being the place where Símon Bolívar, the great South American liberator, died in 1830. It also has a white cathedral (below) and a not so nice beach with a container port at one end, but not a lot else to write home about, so I only stayed there one night before heading into Tayrona National Park.

In Tayrona I stayed at Camping Don Pedro, which was a muddy 45-minute walk from where the minibus dropped me at the end of the road leading from the park entrance. It's located in a tranquil spot a short walk from Arrecifes beach, which is the closest beach to the park entrance. In the spirit of budget travel, I decided that renting a tent was too expensive, and I chose instead to sleep in a hammock. However, I soon discovered that this wasn't the most comfortable option, particularly as it got surprisingly cold in the middle of the night, and I had no blanket.

On my first afternoon in the park I went for a walk along the coast to see some of the nearby beaches. I arrived first at Arrecifes beach, which is scattered with huge boulders that were once worshipped by the indigenous Tayrona people. It's dangerous to swim in the sea off Arrecifes beach because it has a strong current (many people have died here), so the beach was pretty much deserted. I continued to La Amarilla beach (photos here and below), which is much more how you'd expect a Caribbean beach to look. I then passed through La Piscina beach, after which I walked past a colony of these funny blue crabs, which would scuttle away sideways into their dens as I approached them. I then arrived at Cabo San Juan de la Guía, which is the final beach you can get to without walking for several hours.

In the interests of travelling light I'd left my big backpack at the hostel in Santa Marta and brought only the bare minimum in my small rucksack. However, it turned out that I'd brought less than the bare minimum, because I forgot my swimming shorts, which meant that I couldn't really go swimming in the sea. I also forgot my torch, which is pretty essential when staying in places without mains electricity.

The following day I considered walking to El Pueblito, which is a pre-Hispanic village about 1½ hours' walk beyond Cabo San Juan de la Guía. However, my feet were hurting so much (due to my sandals rubbing against mosquito bites on my feet) that I decided against it, and instead just walked to La Amarilla beach again, had lunch there, then went back and read a book in my hammock. That turned out to be a wise move, because it starting raining soon after I got back to my hammock, and didn't stop until night-time.

I left the park early the next morning, returned to Santa Marta to pick up my backpack, and then began the long journey to Mérida in Venezuela. This involved catching a bus to Maicao, which is a town near the border, and then getting a colectivo (shared taxi) to Maracaibo, the first big city on the Venezuelan side, and finally an overnight bus to Mérida. I very nearly missed the bus to Mérida, because I completey forgot that there's a half-hour time difference between Colombia and Venezuela (thanks to a presidential decree by Hugo Chávez in 2007). I wandered out of the bus terminal to look for the 10:30pm bus at what I thought was 10pm, only to find it almost full and about to leave. I was very lucky to get one of the last two remaining seats, moments before the bus departed.

I've also had an interesting introduction to the way things work in Venezuela. In the journey in the colectivo, which was a huge, ancient, American-made car, I was sandwiched in the front seat between the driver and a friend of his. During the three-hour journey the driver stopped four times to allow his friend to go and buy beer for the two of them - at one point the driver had a beer in one hand and his mobile phone in the other, and I'm not sure how he was managing to control the car. Also, soon after crossing the border, the driver's friend instructed me to give him 20 bolívares (about £2) so that he could bribe an official not to search our luggage (I'm not sure why it was my responsibility to pay the bribe). The driver also jumped almost every single red light he came across, as did pretty much everybody else.

Having said all these things, the lady at the tourist information booth at Mérida bus station was incredibly polite to me and even complimented me on my Spanish, so it's definitely not all bad here.