After a horrible night of incessant winds, cold, and swinging back and forth in the hammock, I tried to salvage an hour or so by going upstairs and lying on the floor of the balcony of the hut. I got maybe a half hour before daylight broke. I headed down to the beach deliriously and looked for an open tent since not many people were around. I found one and like a hermit crab, took over my new house to get a little sleep. Sleep I did and that hour or two completely reset me for the morning.
I went over to the restaurant and the guys had all just sat down and we all balked about our horrible night of non sleep. After another bout of fun conversation we all got our things and the guys took off to do the hike up to pueblito and we headed toward Arrecife.
My legs were definitely sore on this one. We weaved again through beach towns and made our way to the last stop before exiting the park through another 45 minute hike through the jungle to the roads.
We took a van out of the park and got dropped off right where another minibus picked us up and took us straight to Santa Marta where we walked a few blocks to his aunts house.
Feride prepared a great spaghetti meal for us and after all the hiking I was ravenous. We ate a great meal and got cleaned up from our hike.
That evening, we headed to his other aunts house for dinner. They lived in a brand new place that was very cute. The aunt was so loving toward me despite us not really being able to communicate. She is a very talented artist and took us through her house showing us amazing pieces if creativity from carvings to paintings. I kept urging her that she definitely needs to sell her work :)
We continued the tour to the terrace outside and Andres pointed out a very sad thing. This lovely house and terrace had bars all over it. Windows I get, but I’d never seen an outdoor space covered in bars to prevent intruders. It felt like what I imagined South Africa’s homes to look like. While I haven’t seen one thing here that has made me feel unsafe, I understand Colombia’s history is riddled with violence, crime, and corruption.
We ended the night saying our goodbyes and Juan, andres’ cousin wanted us to go out. So we headed out for a night on the town by picking up 2 girls at their houses in the taxi and headed for a bar/club called La Puerta. It was very cute with colorful walls, an outdoor area covered by the leaves of a tree. Before we knew it, our group had grown to about 7 of us. It was fun to watch how everyone interacted.
Two of the girls were on their cell phones the entire time not being ‘present’ while others kind of rolled their eyes at their presence. It was funny to see that anywhere you go in the world, there are the same social situations that inevitably occur.
We then went inside to dance a bit. The music was mostly great and I wished we had places that did that type of Latin rumba music. The rhythms were so fun to dance to.
After our adventure out we took the girls back to their homes and headed back to andres’ aunt and uncle’s for the night.