Monday, November 29th, 2010
After nursing our insect bites (which involved burning a tick off Kieran’s leg with a lighter) in Santa Marta, we headed to Palomino, a beautiful beach close to the border of Venezuela. We stayed in a grass covered cabana, which had a loft type thing filled with matresses. Although the first afternoon, it bucketed, and we spent ALOT of time playing 45 and ace to kings, the next morning it was beautiful weather and the water was actually warm at nine in the morning! We spent the day swimming and sunbathing before I said goodbye to the boys and got the bus back to Santa Marta.
Our House:
Ten steps to the beach:
The next morning I took a flight to Popoyan, via Bogota, which is about 8 hours from the Ecuadorian border. I didnt do much as it was raining heavily when I got there so I just strolled around for the afternoon and prepared to get up at five the next morning.
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Posted by lainer in Colombia 
Thursday, November 25th, 2010
From Cali, I left the girls going to Ecuador to do their Galapagos trip (blog post to follow I’m sure!!!) and flew back up north with Kieran and Ciarán to Santa Marta. The flights were a nice change from the long bus journeys we’d been taking.
We booked the tour to start the next morning and going on others advice and the state of their legs coming back from the trek, we stocked up on sun cream and insect repellant.
We left about nine the next morning to meet our group (turns out we were the entire group) and first drove about four hours by jeep to a small town at the start of the trek. There we had lunch and then headed off with Omar, our guide and Luis, his 15 year old nephew. The first day there was quite a bit of walking uphill, but also 2 swims in natural pools which was lovely, before we got to our campsite for the night, where we slept in hammocks in an open air wooden cabana.
Next morning, we started walking around 7.30am and woke up quickly with a nice walk through the river – water up to mid thigh, there was no point even trying to save the shoes as we would be walking through more along the way. We got to our next campsite around 12.30pm and relaxed for the rest of the day.
This was our pattern for most of the trip – walking in the morning, then relax in the afternoon. On the third and fourth day, there was a ridiculous amount of rain in the afternoon so this made total sense. Below a photo of us crossing the river and below it the same river later that afternoon once the rain started.
On the fourth day we got to the Lost City itself. Although the ruins are not as impressive as Machu Pichu, it was still quite impressive to see and worth the walk. The Tayrona people built the Lost City around 700 AD, but by 1600 they had been almost wiped out by the Spanish. It was discovered in 1975 by people looking for gold and then excavated in 1976.
Decendents of the Tayrona still live in this region and we passed some of their villages on the way. They wear long loose white clothing, have really long hair and the men look remarkably like the women. Our guide informed us that the indigenous people own the accomodation that we stayed in along the way and they have access to free medical care and education. Unfortunately, very few actually go to school and many are in bad health and many die young. They often don´t recieve medical attention till it is too late and the use the money they receive from the accomodation to buy modern processed food which they find hard to digest.
Me at the Lost City below:
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