Colombia: en Tours

As a solo traveler and without very much time, I left the comfort of being a traveler to become a tourist. With only two weeks in Colombia, I realized I had not given myself enough time to truly get to know and understand this dynamic and multi-dimensional country. I gave myself a week in Bogotà and a week to discover the Caribbean coast. My tour of the Caribbean coast included Cartagena, Taganga and Parque Tayrona. Cartagena was definitely the most touristy of the three because it is frequented by Colombians and foreigners a like. Taganga would be a close second. This small beach town has been overtaken by Israelis in the last four years and at certain times of year, tourists may out-number the locals. Parque Tayrona is a national park and is therefore only frequented by visitors.

In the interest of saving time and keeping myself on schedule, during my week on the coast I did two tours.

Volcan de Lodo el Totumo (Mud Volcano)
This was one of the places that I had read about before coming that I knew I wanted to visit. The Mud Volcano is located about an hour outside of Cartagena and was definitely worth the visit. Bathing in a cool mud pool that bubbles up from the ground is an unrepeatable experience. Supposedly, the mud bubbles up from a spot 2,300 meters deep. Over time, the mud has formed a small hill that you climb to sit in a man-trained "pool". Fortunately, the mud is not hot, it is actually quite cool.

Arriving at the volcano, we were instructed to strip down to our bathing suits and sandals and hand our cameras over to a local who's job is to take pictures of us covered in mud. We started our climb up the 200 ft pile of mud and at the top found about three Colombian men standing in the pool of mud waiting to give us massages. I climbed down the ladder into the mud and was told to lie back. The sensation of floating in thick, cool, grey mud is indescribable. Unlike in water, where you have to tense certain muscles to stay afloat, the mud just cradles you. After lying down, I was pushed over to a masseuse that completely covered me in mud. They start by covering the face to protect it from the sun. The massages are nothing particularly special, but they are relaxing.

After the massages, I just sat in the mud with the other people from the tour. When I first saw the pool and the masseuses, I didn't think that the pool was that deep. The masseuses were up to their shoulders in mud and I assumed that they had been standing. Once I was able to explore the pool on my own, I realized that they were floating, standing up. It was a surreal feeling. I could bounce up and down, but not sink. Later, talking with another traveler, we wondered what would happen if someone were to jump into the mud. Once submerged, would one be able to swim to the surface? Or would the mud just swallow a person?

None of us wanted to get out. It was fun just sitting there, but the feeling of mud weighing down my bikini bottoms was a little too similar to that of having had fecal accident. We all climbed down and headed to the lagoon to be washed off by local ladies. My idea of how this part of the trip was going to be was much more exotic than how it was. I had pictured a beautiful shaded lagoon and a more ceremonial washing. Instead, we were assigned a bathing lady and told to sit in the water as the ladies poured water over our heads. They did have us take our bathing suits off and washed them as well, but it took the lagoon bathing and at least two more showers to get rid of all the mud.

I had fun at the mud volcano, joking with the people there. It was fun to fake-throw mud at the clean people and dance around to shake off excess mud. The actual area around the volcano is very primitive. The bathrooms are outhouses and there are only two stands that sell drinks and snacks. There was no entrance fee either, however, none of the services are free. After you are rinsed, everyone who did something for you comes looking for a tip. I talked to some people who found this annoying and I agree to a certain extent. We were told the minimum to tip was $2000 COP ($1 USD), but I gave the masseuse, the camera man and the bathing lady each $5000 COP ($2.50 USD). The one tip that I thought was a little ridiculous was to the guy who held our sandals in a bag. I didn't give him as much as the others. It would probably be less annoyin and possibly more effective if they charged a flat rate for all the services and then divided up the day's profits.

Some people complain about giving these people money. Some people even complain about something as little as $2000 COP ($1 USD), which I will never understand. Driving to the volcano, the extreme poverty of the area was painfully obvious and here are Europeans, Americans, Israelis complaining about having to tip these people $1 USD vs. $2 USD and I just don't understand. I don't understand how people with money, with resources and privilege can justify denying others that live without.

The tour I did was with Casa Viena in Cartagena. You can reach the Volcan de Lodo on your own, which would be cheaper than doing the tour. I personally did not think the tour was worth it. It was nice to have an air conditioned van take me there and back, but the guide didn't give us any information and wasn't all that nice or friendly. However, the tour was convenient and economical.

Parque Tayrona

From Cartagena, I headed to the Caribbean sea. After asking around, I was told to go to a small fishing village called Taganga. Tanganga is about 15 minutes from the larger city of Santa Marta which is about five hours from Cartagena. People had warned me that the beach in Taganga was not spectacular, but the town was happening enough to give a solo traveler things to do at night. Taganga is also the jumping off point for the infamous Parque Tayrona.

Founded as a national park in the sixties, Parque Tayrona is 12,000 hectares of beaches and jungle. The entrance to the park is about an hour east from Taganga and easily accessible by public transportation from Santa Marta. From the entrance to the park, you have to walk about an hour to reach the first beach called Arrecifes and from there it is about a fifteen minute walk to each following beach. There are also horses available. Most people go to Tayrona and camp. There you can rent hammocks or tents and each little camping spot has a restaurant with food. I met a lot of people who had spent days and even weeks just hanging out and exploring the endless jungle and Caribbean beaches.

Due to a lack of time and the fact that I am traveling alone, I did not want to camp at Tayrona. I actually wasn't planning to go at all. I only had three full days in Taganga and I wanted to make sure that I got my beach time in. However, everyone was telling me how beautiful Tayrona was. More than one person claimed it was the second most beautiful beach in the world. This is quite the claim, but when I asked what the first most beautiful beach was in the world, no one seemed to know. On my last day in Taganga, I decided to go on a tour to Tayrona. I can see why people go and camp there because one day is not enough to see all the beauty in the park.

There were two things I really enjoyed about the tour. I originally had been dreading the hour and half walk through the jungle to get to the beach. It wasn't so much the walk itself, but the heat that pervades on the Colombian coast. It also seemed like a lot of wasted time, three hours total, that could have been spent tanning on the beach. The walk through the jungle was actually my favorite part. It was beautiful and it isn't that often that I get to walk through an actual jungle. The trail was easy with a few ups and downs, but nothing too strenuous. We had a guide who was an old guy from the area and I kept pestering for Colombian history, which he happily obliged.

The other aspect of the tour I enjoyed was the fact that I was the only non-Colombian in the whole group. I went to the park on a Sunday of a holiday weekend, so the Colombians were out vacationing in full force. Of the eighteen people in our group, I was the only whitey and the only single person. I don't think the other people really knew what to think of me at first. There was, of course, the question of whether or not I could speak Spanish, but when I was pestering our guide with questions, they all started to warm up. I ate lunch with a couple from the city of Medellìn. They convinced me that when I return to Colombia, the first place I should visit is Medellìn. The Colombians were from cities from all over and obviously had money. It was nice to see them out traveling.

The one part about taking tours that I don't like, however, is being on someone else's time-table. Having to adhere to a schedule is obviously intrinsic to touring, but it still bothered me. For one, the day we went was cloudy and as we ate lunch it started to rain. When the rain started, I wanted to go. All I wanted to do was sit out in the sun and swim, but with a cooling rain, those two activities were less than fun.

It ended up being fun anyway because I wasn't alone in the desire to go early. About twenty minutes before we were supposed to meet up to head back, a couple from Baranquilla started rounding everyone up. The lady told me that with the rain there was no point in being there and she was ready to head back to the bus. She took control and got everybody back on the trail. I was right there with her thinking, so I just got behind her and started walking. She booked back to the bus without looking back. We did the hour and a half walk back to the parking lot in under an hour. This lady wasn't fit, or skinny, she was just determined to get back to the bus. It was cool we talked as we huffed and sweated our buns off through the jungle. The rest of the group showed up a half hour later and were asking if we had ridden horses back. We just laughed and said we flew.

I definitely recommend Parque Tayrona as one of the spots to hit while traveling in Colombia. Just bring a friend, or lover, or group of people to have fun with.