Palomino and downtime... 7/17/12 - 7/18/12

After Taganga, the Swiss couple, Oliver and Linda, headed off for the "Ciudad Perdida" (Lost City) trek, and the rest of us went on to Palomino.  They were great fun to travel with, we wish them the very best on the rest of their trip.

After reaching the town of Palomino (roughly 1 1/2 hour bus ride east of Taganga), we caught moto-taxis down some dirt roads and it was about ten minutes from the town to the actual beach.  There were 3 hostels on the beach and we weren't too impressed with the hostels as it was a bit pricey for what you actually got.  Also, the water looked more like Surfside, TX on a bad day than the bright blue water we saw in Tayorona.  Thus, opposed to chilling on the beach for a few days, we decided to only spend one night.

We stayed at a place called Finca Escondida.  We paid for a hammock which was about $11 and an outdoor bed for $16.  It was actually a quite comfy night.

So after hanging out, eating fresh seafood, and getting a good nights rest, we went on a tubing adventure.  Tubing down the river was the main thing to do in Palomino.  Once again, Matt had to be the "Gringo Muy Grande" on the back of a bike going down narrow roads and up hills, while holding the bike with one hand and a tube with the other.  At times, the bike couldn't make it up the hill with him on it so he just got off and ran up the hill and let the moto-taxi catch up.  Of course, it was the bad manufacturing of the bike and small tires, not his rather large frame.  Anyways, once we all gathered at the drop off, we did a quick 25 minute hike up the mountain to the put-in point on the river and floated down the river to where it meets the ocean.  Since we've been in Colombia people keep telling us to lower our expectations or have no expectations so that we aren't disappointed in some of the tours.  We forgot.  We pictured the tubing to be similar to tubing down the New Braunfels river, but with bluer water.  The water was pretty brown; however, we still enjoyed our time with our new friends and looking at the scenery around the river.

Once back at our place, we rinsed off, ate, packed up, had to part ways with one more in our group, Carlijne, and then headed back into town to catch a bus back to Santa Marta.

Apparently, we ended up on the slowest bus ever, never reaching above 40 m.p.h. and stopping VERY frequently.  By very frequently we mean sometimes twice in one minute.  However, it was neat to pick up quite a few banana workers and other locals returning home from a hard days work.  It's nice to get an inside look into each region's culture and the people.  You can see it was a typical Latin American local bus that wasn't afraid to stack the people in:

Once in Santa Marta, we made our way to La Brisa Loca, a hostel recommended by Ben.  It was very nice, had a great atmosphere, and good food next door.  We wanted to use the night and next day (waiting on a night bus to San Gil) to play catch up.  Each dorm bed was $12.  The only not so great thing about this stay was that we chose a room with no air conditioning, only a fan, and that was not enough! We both woke up about 5:30 am drenched in pools of sweat and could not go back to sleep.  So we got up and were productive before our night bus departed for San Gil.