Colombia`s Caribbean coast 2nd-7th November

The day after getting back from the trek (Sunday 2nd), Ben and I along with Kim, Casey & Colin took a trip into Tayrona national park. The first part of this involves negotiating with the boatmen on the beach a price for taking you on the hour and a half trip round the coast. As we were a group of five we had very good buying power and a Small biding war broke out between them, leading to us getting a pretty good price. We were then sworn to secrecy by our captain not to tell the other passengers on the boat how much we paid!The trip itself is quite fun, round all the bays and headlands in the park. There were lots of flying fish being literally scared out of the water by the passing boat, meaning we got a great display of them flying through the air around the boat.We arrived at a place called Cabo de la San Juan, just as the weather was starting to change for the worse, and managed to get my tent up just before the rain started proper. The park is full of your stereotypical tropical beaches, backed by palm trees and jungle. We spent the first afternoon wandering a few beaches west and playing some baseball with drift wood and coconuts. The next morning Ben and I, went exploring in the opposite direction and found another beautiful beach to generally laze about on. After lunch we caught another boat back to Taganga. However this one only had one rather intermittently working engine, making it a rather slow and tedious stop start journey back.The other 3 left for Bogotà (and ultimately back to Peru) on Monday evening, so I definitely won`t be running into them anymore on my journey having bumpt into them in 4 different countries. On Tuesday Ben and I went did a couple for dives, off an island in back in the national park. Saw plenty of sea life, lots of fish, eels and poisonous jelly fish! In the evening we were going to do a night dive, however the less than perfect weather put a stop to that. On Wednesday morning we did another couple of dives, before getting a bus in the afternoon back to Cartagena (the main coastal city a few hours down the coast). On Thursday morning we we took a trip to the Volcan del Lodo (mud volcano), which is a 15m mound an hour or so north of the city. At the top there is a about a 3x3m pool of mud. It is definitely a very strange experience getting in the mud as it is so thick. Moving around is extremely difficult and you are so buoyant you can stand with your head completely out of the mud without even touching the bottom! In the afternoon we took a wander around Cartagena old town, which has some of the best Colonial buildings in south America. The entire old city is also surrounded by huge walls which still have some of the old cannons in place, mainly to prevent attack from Pirates and the British. It is nice enough just to wander around the old city with its very European architecture, we visited a couple of museums including the gold museum and an inquisition museum displaying all sorts of devised for torturing non believers.On our last morning in Cartagena we visited the old fort of Castillo san Felipe. This huge fortress added to aver the years now occupies an entire hill just outside the old walled city. The hill itself is criss crossed with numerous tunnels, which allow easy communication between its various levels. It is a very impressive defensive structure, that was never taken despite numerous attacks. Even though we went there at 8am, the sun was so hot that it made being out of the shade pretty unbearable, and the tunnels themselves were like a sauna. We retreated back to the hostel by about 10, before heading out to the airport for our afternoon flights. Ben is now flying back to the u.k and I have just arrived in Panama city. Back on my own again now, but really not that long until i get back now at less than 6 weeks.
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