It's hot down here!

(Sept 10, 2012)

After a restful day on David’s finca, we felt ready to continue on northwards towards the Caribbean coast. We said goodbye to our wonderful hosts David and Johan and headed onwards to our next destination: San Gil. En route we stopped off at a large town called Yopal, which as the centre of the oil industry in Colombia has grown from a sleepy town like Paz de Ariporo to contain a bustling 150,000 people. After another grueling night bus ride on what seemed like back roads through the depths of the Colombian jungle, we arrived in San Gil.

Street climbs in San Gil

San Gil turned out to be a nice little town originally built in a small valley surrounded by rolling hills. As a result of unplanned growth onto the surrounding slopes, San Gil has VERY steep streets.  We were pretty tired the first day but the couchsurfers we were staying with, Helmer and Lorena, were fantastically welcoming.  They set us up at their place and then left for work so we had plenty of time to catch up on email and sleep after our bus ride.  That evening, Helmer invited us to visit the university where he works as the coordinator of the English department. We were lucky enough to sit in on one of his English classes and meet with virtually every professor teaching at the university. The following day we explored San Gil and its breathtakingly beautiful Galleneral ('ga-general') Park before spending a few hours in the Hollywoodesqe colonial town called Barichara. 

Ready for some sun and prepared with deep reserves of sunscreen, we packed our bags and caught and early bus to the city of Valledupar, only a few hours from the coast and along the eastern border with Venezuela.  We had heard that Valledupar was renowned for its music scene and we had fortuitously arrived just in time for a concert the following night! At the concert we listened to 4 different Vallenato singers and danced the night away as a small group of onlookers gathered to puzzle over how such energetic foreigners had made their way into their ‘off the tourist track’ community!  [Editor’s note:  Robin was incredible popular as a dance partner and had a steady stream of enthusiastic partners all evening.]  En route to another early morning bus we said goodbye to our amazing hosts and dancing partners, Andrea and Karina, and headed off on our grand adventure to Cabo de la Vela in La Guajira province – the northernmost tip of Colombia and South America as a whole.

Not a firm fixture on the ‘tourist’ map as of yet, the means by which to reach Cabo de la Vela without a private driver or tour was complex and uncertain. Always ones to support prior research to any back roads adventure, we had asked a number of people in Valledupar and consulted online blogs, all of which told us to bus from Valledupar to a central highway crossroads called Cuatros Vias, take a private car (apparently a taxi) from Cuatros Vias to the frontier-like town of Uribia and then to squeeze into a goat-laden truck bed for a bumpy ride across the desert to the town of Cabo de la Vela. It being Sunday, we were concerned that we might find ourselves stuck in Uribia without means to continue on, but our connections all progressed smoothly and we soon (after a mere 5 hours!) found ourselves waiting patiently in the back of our ‘camionetta’ to Cabo de la Vela.

Salt encrusted desert trails in La Guajira, Colombia

We waited for upwards of one hour with no other interested passengers so the driver(s) (all four of them!) decided to cut their losses and head to Cabo with an under capacity load. Rather than goats our bus jostled through the desert roads with Styrofoam boxes of fish and never more than 3 other passengers on board. As we drove, the scenery shifted and the desert scrub interspersed with prickly cacti thinned to allow a maze of tire tracks to wind through, undoubtedly confusing any unaware private vacationer with map and rental car. Eventually the scrub disappeared completely until we were driving over an expanse of flat desert land, ruled over by the oven-like gusts of wind that left salt-encrusted tips on petrified tire tracks. We began to see reed houses perched along the interface of the desert and the Caribbean Sea, the houses of the Wayuu indigenous group who continue to live across the La Guajira province.

Suddenly we peeled into what can only be described as a ‘parking lot’ due to the track lines that crisscrossed and our 4 drivers got out. They stood at the window of the one room store and ordered beer after beer while we watched and waited from the back of the truck. Ten minutes and 12 beers later they climbed back into the truck and drove much more cautiously along the desert coast until reaching Cabo.

We struggled down the main (and only) street of Cabo de la Vela, fighting against the glare of the sun on our faces and necks and the convection-like wind that tore at us from all sides. Finally, we decided to stay in hammocks that sway on the covered roof of the El Caracol Hospedaje. After unpacking our bags we met two of our roommates (Marcel from the UK and Val from Italy) and set off down the beach to catch the sunset.  With the sun so low on the horizon, one could not say that the temperature was cool but that it was manageable. Standing on a hill that seemed to be some sort of religious space as evidenced by the giant cross perched atop, we watched the sun sink. Wanting to see as much of the area as I could, I tried to encourage the guys to keep walking to the next point while there was still daylight but they preferred to relax on the hill. So, off I ran down the hillside, across the brush, and over rocky crags until I reached the next point which held the ‘lighthouse’. I reached it just as the top secant of the sun sunk into the sea and was able to reach my relaxing team by the light of the last escaping rays. We stopped at a restaurant on the way back to have dinner (the restaurant was supposed to be inexpensive and have traditional Wayuu fare but they were out of this by the time we got to them and we had to suffice with more expensive basic offerings).

Back at the hostel Peter embarked on his own adventure into a restless and painful night of food poisoning. In hindsight it is ironic that Peter got sick from the most expensive meal we have had so far so he has now banished himself to only eating cockroaches and pot scrapings (well, this may be an exaggeration). Regardless, now feeling much better and rested, we both concur that Peter’s timing for getting food poisoning was abysmal as Cabo de la Vela has a very limited water supply and our packed-in supplies were running low. With this in mind we hopped on the one truck out of Cabo the following morning (it left at 4am so as to commute workers to the city), at which point we had our truly ‘authentic’ Cabo transportation experience:

Just to give you an idea,
but add small horns!

Peter aptly stationed himself by the back of the truck bed and, though I tried to stay nearby, I was steadily pushed further and further back as passengers got on. By the midway point between Cabo de la Vela there were 19 passengers wedged into the truck bed and a docile sheep, tied at the ankles, bleating, and deposited right at Peter’s feet. Peter handled himself marvellously on the ride across the night shaded desert and was lucky to have the head end of the sheep at his feet. Let’s just say that the lady sitting across from him was not so lucky…

We hopped from truck, to taxi, to bus and arrived in the oppressive Santa Marta heat by 11am. We raced to our hostel at El Miramar and immediately siesta-d the midday heat away, waking up in a disoriented puddle and making the important switch to a ‘luxurious’ air conditioned room (where we are now happily confined!)

Tomorrow we’ll take a tour of the beautifully tropical Tayrona National Park and then we’ll ‘jet’ (bus) down to Cartegena for a day or two and then (blissfully) further South into the mountains.

Despite the heat and food poisoning, we are having a great time! We’re choosing to see the current discomforts as an important part of the acclimatization process and look forward to future challenges, adventures, and wonderful, wonderful people!  Our plan is to spend roughly a month in each of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, which leaves us roughly 2 more weeks in Colombia before we cross into Ecuador! Plenty of time to acclimatize ourselves to the heat of the equator – right?