Being able to watch the sun rise above the ocean from the coziness of your own bed it's not a bad way to start the day ;)
& that's exactly how our 2nd day in Tayrona begun.
We just had to unzip our tent, to have this magical view in front of us :)
We woke up so early (on the other side, in Tayrona there's no much to do at night, so we went to bed so early, too) that the restaurant wasn't even open yet for breakfast.
While waiting, we had a walk on the beach, that is actually the way each day should begin, in my ideal world.
We enjoyed a good breakfast as we needed lot of energy for the day: we planned to hike to Pueblito, an ancient indian village, known to be a small version of la ciudad perdida (the lost city) which is an ancient indian village lost in the middle jungle, to reach which you need a several days trek.
Now, we did difficult treks, probably most difficult than the one to Pueblito, but the heat & above all the humidity made this hike so very difficult!!
Honestly, I don't know if I ever sweat that much!!
There are information on your way up, for you to be prepared, the worst part is between 60% & 80% of the path.
Also, we generally find that informations regarding hiking time & difficulty are often overestimated, usually when we read that a hike takes 3 hours, we usually do it in 2,5 for instance.
Well, Colombia is the only place where this is the opposite: if they say a trek takes around 2 hours & it's easy, consider it's 3 hours long & quite difficult!
The hike to Pueblito for instance is quite demanding, you're constantly obliged to walk on shaky stones & at times there's a rope to help you going up otherwise it's too slippery or steep. They say it's a family hike, I wouldn't recommend bring children there!
Don't get me wrong, Tayrona is a beautiful place & I'm not complaining, but I would have liked to know all that before going, that's why I'm saying.
We generally found in Colombia they're not really careful about safety...
The hike was nice, but all in all, I wouldn't do it again. Heat & humidity make it really difficult, honestly I wanted to turn back half way, but hubby wanted to finish the hike so... Plus, I spent most of the time looking at where I put my feet for not falling down instead of enjoying the view...
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| Blue butterfly |
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| The tireless giant ants of Tayrona at work ;) |
& when we finally made it to Pueblito... well the ruins are quite small & not really impressive...
Anyway it was good exercise! ;)
Time to go to the beach!
Next to El Cabo (again, they say it's a 10 minutes walk to go there, but it's more the double!) there's a beach called La Piscina (the swimming pool) known to be a perfect place for snorkeling as the beach is protected by coral reefs that create a sort of lagoon with calm water.
The beach is beautiful, fringed by palm trees & almost desert.
But snorkeling was disappointing: the sea was quite rough so we couldn't see much underwater, but worst - despite the fact that everyone in the park will tell you la Piscina is a safe place to swim - there were very strong currents. We entered the water without palms - as the stand renting snorkeling gear was empty - we didn't go that far & we're pretty good swimmers (actually, I'm a former Italian champion of finswimming), but at a certain point, we were unable to swim back to the beach. We started to panic, before realizing that the current was taking us on some stones from which we could go back on the beach.
Still it was stupid to go in the water without palm & I really advice you to be very careful if you're traveling in Colombia. Not only in Tayrona, but everywhere, we really felt that safety it's not really a priority.
Over the beach, there's some cabins, we went there to see if we could have lunch & enjoyed a delicious fish in front of the ocean! :)
(I really recommend this place for a meal!!)
We went back to El Cabo, happily meeting some monkeys along the way 🙊 🙉
where we spent the rest of the afternoon, soaking up the sun & playing in the water (in my experience, El Cabo is safer for swimming than La Piscina & there were more fishes to see there) before taking the boat to Taganga, a small fishing village just outside the park. But that's tomorrow's story 😉
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