Tayrona, near Santa Marta
I only spent three weeks in Colombia, but more than a week was here at Tayrona National Park on the Caribbean coast near Santa Marta, close to Venezuela. The mountains rise right up against the coast, so the place felt isolated, wild, and still wonderfully unspoiled.
You had to hike in for a couple of hours along the coast, carrying all your food and water, but that also kept most of the ya-hoos out. It cost about one dollar a day for hammock space, or $1.50 for tent space. The six of us set up hammocks and stayed for a week. Every day we swam, hiked, snorkeled, and socialized with everyone we met. There was excellent reef snorkeling a few hundred yards offshore. We only brought food and water for three or four days, but survived the last few days on mangos, coconuts, and fish. We spent a couple hours every day finding mangos, opening coconuts, and catching fish.
The reef and the rough surf
Colombia is an awesome place. One of the best things was that there were almost no Americans. I must have met people from forty different countries during that week camping there, and only one or two other Americans. We had great campfires every night and lots of conversations with many cool people. It was amazing how many teachers and other travelers were wandering for months at a time with only a backpack.
The coolest thing about this national park was the snorkeling. The reef was only about 200 yards offshore, but you had to get around behind it, through sometimes heavy surf, to avoid getting smashed into it. The cove itself was fairly protected, but nearly everywhere else the surf was big, wild, and very dangerous. We only had one snorkel setup among the six of us, but one of us was always out on the reef. The water temperature was so perfect that some of us stayed in for three hours at a time, only coming out for more sunblock.
Fish, coconuts, cookies, and ruins we never reached
Every day a Rasta man came by with a spear, asking if anyone wanted fish for dinner. We said, “Yeah, for six of us.” He came back an hour later with a huge fish still kicking. We gave him a couple bucks and fried that sucker up with coconut and rum.
Another Rastafarian guy came by every day with homemade cookies — three or four kinds, mostly with coconut and chocolate. Some were magical cookies that cost a bit more and had some kind of local vegetation added. I've only consumed marijuana one time between 1987 and 2026, and I've got to say, those magical cookies were some serious cookies—especially in an incredibly magical setting like where we were there at Tayrona National Park!
Ciudad Perdida is an ancient stone city in the interior. Every morning we planned to hike to it before it got too warm, but after a morning swim and socializing, we never seemed to get up there. Having already been to Machu Picchu and other ruins a couple months earlier, that seems to be the one big ruin I missed.
Three weeks in Colombia
I only saw a few Americans in all of Colombia during my three weeks there. In fact, I told almost everyone I was from Canada, eh? Colombia was a great place: very friendly, with great people, music, and energy. Just do not get in trouble there. Do not expect Uncle Sam to help you out. All fines were pay-on-the-spot, if you were lucky.
I had just come from three weeks in the Galápagos Islands, and Tayrona felt just as wild. Cartagena, Medellín, and Cali were all great to visit, but Bogotá felt way too dangerous to me at the time, like many capital cities everywhere. From here, I almost went to Cuba, but the ban was still on, so I reluctantly decided not to.
Related travel links
Four people who visited the park around the same time wrote short but interesting reports. I kept the original links here as part of the page history.
