Santa Marta → Palomino → Camarones → Riohacha
I think i left you feeling in two minds about whether i wanted to stay in Santa Marta or not. In the end i did stay there, till after the election, but the town didn't really click with me.
One of the days i took a trip to Bahía Concha, which is a supposedly idyllic beach in the Tayrona National Park. It seemed like it was going to be idyllic as i cycled there - out the edge of town, over a rough gravel road, up a hill, into the countryside... Then i showed up and there were people blocking the road saying it'd cost me 50,000 pesos to get in. I wasn't that keen to pay, so i turned around to head back, at which point they said "oh wait, actually it's just 5,000 pesos, you pay up there". It's the first time since i've been traveling in Colombia when locals tried to get me to pay such an excessive "dumb foreigner" tax and it pissed me right off, because i was obviously hot and dirty and covered in sweat and looking far more wretched than the fucking dudes trying to scam me. I grumpily paid 5,000 pesos to get a legit wristband, cycled the next kilometer or two down to the actual beach, and promptly turned back around and got the hell out of there.
It was packed. Yes, it was Saturday, so most likely the worst possible day of the week to visit, but even still. Like most every other beach i've visited in Colombia, it was thronged with sunbathers, and there were stalls and touts selling all manner of crap. Like, why would i bother traveling all the way up a gravel road to a national park and pay entry to get literally the exact same experience you can get in downtown Santa Marta? And neighboring Taganga? And Rodadero?
So i battled back over the hill and decided to head for a point i found on the map that had a cool name but i had no idea what to expect - Paso del Mango. The road was steep. Much steeper than the one over to the beach. It was the foothills of the epic Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range, which eventually hits thousands of meters above sea level. It was gravel too. Along the way i passed eco lodge after eco hostel after organic farm slash bed and breakfast slash whatever the fuck. Eventually i got to Paso del Mango and turns out it's just a fork in the road that crosses a gorgeously picturesque river with a hostel on each side. Half the kids from the village down the mountain seemed to be splashing around in the pools, so i huffed and i puffed and i pushed my bike even further up the hill, to where my map showed another river crossing, but without a bridge.
Sure enough, when i got there, it was a ford, with water going well over 50cm deep. On the other side of the river a bit further up is a cacao farm, and after that apparently it's just hiking trails into the mountains. I didn't want to push my bike through the river, so i just sat on the edge and quietly relaxed, alone. A couple of hippies waded past and offered me some chocolates they had either made or bought, but i said no, because who the hell accepts random food from a hippie in the woods?
Going back down the hill was glorious. Zoom!
That was the day that i noticed - again - the weirdly racialized stratification that also caught my eye in Panama. On the streets in the Caribbean cities being white you feel like a minority. But in these organic/eco/agri tourism spots, all the people staying in the accommodations are white. Sure, white with dreadlocks and saris and crocheted bags, but still notably whiter than back in town, and always whiter than the folks taxiing them up and down the hill on motorcycles. Is it because white people just enjoy getting back to nature more? Or is this a symptom of yet another racialized wealth gap?
But i noticed other things that creeped me out about Santa Marta too. For instance, on Sunday when i went to the laundry to drop off my clothes, the guy at the laundry said i should be careful walking the streets. "It's Sunday, but it's also election day, so there aren't many people outside. Lots of Venezuelans in this neighborhood, you have to watch out for those Venezuelans." I might have just written it off as a once-off thing, if the previous night i hadn't been drinking beers with a local who told me to watch out for "índios" who are all "malo" and would rob me if i went cycling alone in rural areas of La Guajira. Where "índio" is an old-fashioned and arguably offensive term for indigenous people ("indígena"), and anyway sort of insensitive given there is only one indigenous group in the part of La Guajira he was talking about (the Wayuu people). And, of course, i got "gringoed" more times in one day in Santa Marta than all the rest of my time in Latin America put together. The impression i left with is that it's an insular and mildly racist town that's lucky to have some national parks next to it so tourists flock to it anyway.
Monday i headed out to La Guajira to get attacked by some indigenous people. I had originally been considering camping at the other side of Tayrona National Park, but apparently the best campsites you have to hike to on foot, which is too much hassle when i also have a bike and panniers, and when i got there i almost had to vomit at the commercialism anyway.
I mean, getting out of Santa Marta going east it was a tough ride. It's something like a 400m climb, which isn't heaps, but on this heavy bike it was pretty difficult. It felt good to push, though. Just forcing myself up a mountain road, there's something peaceful about the exertion, especially on the moments when no buses or trucks were zooming past. And of course the cruise down the hill was incredible.
But then i hit the hostel row. From the southern entrance to the national park (near the summit of the pass) to the eastern entrance of the national park (near the water) all the way on to Palomino it's just hostel after hostel after hostel. Or, like "eco lodge". Or "natural hotel". Or whatever wanky name they're trying to give to places that are same as any other hostel, just on the side of a mountain. And there was a parade of very white people with backpacks and flowy clothes and flip-flops walking around from hostel to tienda and back. And... i just felt like... i can't do this. I can't stay in a place like this. I don't know what irks me so much about it, but it just gives me these horrible exploitative feelings. I can't explain exactly why these rural hostels bother me more than a concrete box in town.
Because that's where i ended up in Palomino, after struggling across two or three more steep hills of about 100m each, right along the Caribbean coast.
Palomino is one of a dozen or so shabby villages that developed around every river trickling north from the Sierra Nevada. You get this hilly, jungle landscape, maybe some banana plantations, then as soon as there's a river there's a little settlement with some fruit stalls, some guys BBQing up plantains and chorizo and arepas... Most all of the settlements have a couple of tiendas where you can buy water and beer and coke and a llantería where you can buy tires. (Amusingly, on that day i passed two buses that were pulled over by the side of the road changing their tires while the passengers stood around looking miffed. I'm sure the llanterías do good business.)
I checked into a hotel where i think i was the only person staying overnight. I liked it because the staff were friendly and they let me put my bike in the back on the ground floor. Till about midnight there was battling accordion music blasting from several nearby bars, which might've annoyed me if i wasn't so tired from the ride that falling asleep was trivial.
I also decided that evening that Santa Marta was clearly cursed for me, because for the first time in my traveling life, i forgot an entire bag of shit at my previous accommodation. Like, not just a toothbrush or a phone charger or pair of socks. My whole toilet bag. So i wasn't able to brush my teeth that night, or apply moisturizer that my skin desperately needed, or wash my hair, or put deodorant. And the next morning was an expensive exercise in re-buying everything.
Then i headed on to Riohacha. Except i didn't fucking make it to Riohacha.
When i was cycling across Turtle Island, by the end i was making around 100km per day, some days more, occasionally a bit less. Santa Marta to Palomino was around 70km, but there was something like 800m of hill-climbing, so i figured i should probably be able to push myself the 90-100km mostly flat to Riohacha. Yeah, nah. Because after about 50km of rolling hills and trees, you hit a straight-up desert. And that's when the 35km/h headwind which i had sneakily been escaping by hiding behind trees and hills up until this point smacked me straight in the face.
It was brutal. No trees for shade any more. Wind just blasting against me, every step felt like i was pedaling through molasses. I was barely breaking 10km/h, and with 30km to go i just resolved to stop at the next town - Camarones. Camarones had actually been recommended to me by a hippie i had met while getting an arepa that morning. He ambled over to me and struck up a conversation and tried to sell me tickets to a full moon party happening this weekend in Palomino, then tried to sell me weed, then took down my number so he could call me just in case i still wanted to buy the stuff i had just said i didn't want to buy. He and his partner were jugglers, but i'm not sure if they were travelers who also juggled or just local street performers in town for a gig. They were trying to get back to Santa Marta. I gotta say, i was very tempted by the idea of going to a psytrance party in the jungle - it's been years since i've been to a proper outdoor doof - but i didn't really want to sit around in Palomino for three more days waiting. So the hippie told me to go to Camarones, camp on the beach, drink beer, smoke pot, then come back two days later.
Camarones is actually not on the beach. Kinda like all of the "beach" towns along the trunk highway, it's several km inland, and there are small roads that go down to the beach. For a good chunk of the coast, none of the beaches are public - the only way to visit them is to spend the night in a hostel that's on the beach. But in Camarones you can actually get down to the water... Although it's more of a mud flat than a beach.
I only found this out the next day, though, because by the time i got to Camarones i was about to collapse from exhaustion. I found a hotel in town designed exactly the same as the one in Palomino. I've started seeing these all over the place now - three concrete pre-fab units high, with a spiral staircase in the middle. They're a budget hotel design, 60,000 pesos per night (around $20) but spotlessly clean. They remind me of my favorite hotel chain in China - 7 Days Inn. Cheap, clean and bare-bones. If you only traveled in the US, think Super 8. I love these kinds of accommodation more than anywhere else. Unlike a hostel, you can just pay and not have to socialize with anyone. You get a private room. Private bathroom. They're usually located in a more industrial part of town, or next to a market, convenient for traveling workers, but not really for tourists. There's always somewhere to booze nearby, but it's a watering hole for locals, not a backpacker meet-up spot. Love it.
Anyway, i actually did socialize a bit more than expected at this hotel, chattering to the front desk guy about learning languages. He was bilingual Wayuu and Spanish, and was trying to learn some English. He was impressed i had cycled all the way from Barranquilla and said i made the right decision to stop overnight because Riohacha was a tough ride.
He wasn't wrong. The next morning i rode out to the "beach", which is right up next to a national protected area for pink flamingos, in the hope of seeing my favorite bird. Sadly i did not see a single flamingo, although i did see plenty of goats.
I had a chat to some of the local people living down there too, and they were super chill. Said they could take me out on a canoe into the lagoon and try spot some flamingos, but i honestly told them i had no cash left, because these small villages do not have banks or ATMs, so i needed to get to Riohacha before doing anything else.
It was grueling. It was only about 20km, but the sun was hot and the wind was fierce all the way. It reminds me of when i made it over the Rocky Mountains in Canada and got into the prairies thinking they'd be a breeze, but boy was i wrong. Praries, savanna, desert, whatever you want to call it, it's so much tougher to ride than mountains. At least in the hills occasionally you get a break, you get some downhill, you can take shade under a tree, or next to a cliff. When you're on the plains, if you're going against the wind, you're just fucked.
I was very pleased to get into town. Riohacha turned out to be a shabby "former glory" kinda beach resort town, which is my favorite. And it has a real beach! Finally! A public beach that you can get to without paying anyone, a wide beach, a beach that isn't completely covered with shelters that some assholes are trying to charge money for you to use. The wind was intense and the waves were crashing way out past the Mary statue on the end of the pier. I sat there and let the wind ruffle my hair and breathed in the salt without any touts ruining my day.
I already like this town. It feels like Barranquilla again, but smaller. I had to stop in at three or four different hotels and hostels till i found one that had private rooms and space for my bike, but i am pretty happy with this place. The front desk guy was helpful in giving me information about how to get to Cabo de la Vela, and completely open to me leaving my bike and panniers here while i go on that trip into the Actual Fucking Desert.
I'm excited. Cabo de la Vela will be my first excursion into "sand everywhere, no roads" desert since visiting Namibia, but this time around i can speak the lingua franca, which'll make me feel like less of a tosser when i try jump into a share taxi with locals. This part of the journey is basically the only place i had on my South American bucket list, so i hope it doesn't suck. But if it does suck, oh well, still got a bike, and that's pretty fun to ride around no matter where i go.
One of the days i took a trip to Bahía Concha, which is a supposedly idyllic beach in the Tayrona National Park. It seemed like it was going to be idyllic as i cycled there - out the edge of town, over a rough gravel road, up a hill, into the countryside... Then i showed up and there were people blocking the road saying it'd cost me 50,000 pesos to get in. I wasn't that keen to pay, so i turned around to head back, at which point they said "oh wait, actually it's just 5,000 pesos, you pay up there". It's the first time since i've been traveling in Colombia when locals tried to get me to pay such an excessive "dumb foreigner" tax and it pissed me right off, because i was obviously hot and dirty and covered in sweat and looking far more wretched than the fucking dudes trying to scam me. I grumpily paid 5,000 pesos to get a legit wristband, cycled the next kilometer or two down to the actual beach, and promptly turned back around and got the hell out of there.
It was packed. Yes, it was Saturday, so most likely the worst possible day of the week to visit, but even still. Like most every other beach i've visited in Colombia, it was thronged with sunbathers, and there were stalls and touts selling all manner of crap. Like, why would i bother traveling all the way up a gravel road to a national park and pay entry to get literally the exact same experience you can get in downtown Santa Marta? And neighboring Taganga? And Rodadero?
So i battled back over the hill and decided to head for a point i found on the map that had a cool name but i had no idea what to expect - Paso del Mango. The road was steep. Much steeper than the one over to the beach. It was the foothills of the epic Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range, which eventually hits thousands of meters above sea level. It was gravel too. Along the way i passed eco lodge after eco hostel after organic farm slash bed and breakfast slash whatever the fuck. Eventually i got to Paso del Mango and turns out it's just a fork in the road that crosses a gorgeously picturesque river with a hostel on each side. Half the kids from the village down the mountain seemed to be splashing around in the pools, so i huffed and i puffed and i pushed my bike even further up the hill, to where my map showed another river crossing, but without a bridge.
Sure enough, when i got there, it was a ford, with water going well over 50cm deep. On the other side of the river a bit further up is a cacao farm, and after that apparently it's just hiking trails into the mountains. I didn't want to push my bike through the river, so i just sat on the edge and quietly relaxed, alone. A couple of hippies waded past and offered me some chocolates they had either made or bought, but i said no, because who the hell accepts random food from a hippie in the woods?
Going back down the hill was glorious. Zoom!
That was the day that i noticed - again - the weirdly racialized stratification that also caught my eye in Panama. On the streets in the Caribbean cities being white you feel like a minority. But in these organic/eco/agri tourism spots, all the people staying in the accommodations are white. Sure, white with dreadlocks and saris and crocheted bags, but still notably whiter than back in town, and always whiter than the folks taxiing them up and down the hill on motorcycles. Is it because white people just enjoy getting back to nature more? Or is this a symptom of yet another racialized wealth gap?
But i noticed other things that creeped me out about Santa Marta too. For instance, on Sunday when i went to the laundry to drop off my clothes, the guy at the laundry said i should be careful walking the streets. "It's Sunday, but it's also election day, so there aren't many people outside. Lots of Venezuelans in this neighborhood, you have to watch out for those Venezuelans." I might have just written it off as a once-off thing, if the previous night i hadn't been drinking beers with a local who told me to watch out for "índios" who are all "malo" and would rob me if i went cycling alone in rural areas of La Guajira. Where "índio" is an old-fashioned and arguably offensive term for indigenous people ("indígena"), and anyway sort of insensitive given there is only one indigenous group in the part of La Guajira he was talking about (the Wayuu people). And, of course, i got "gringoed" more times in one day in Santa Marta than all the rest of my time in Latin America put together. The impression i left with is that it's an insular and mildly racist town that's lucky to have some national parks next to it so tourists flock to it anyway.
Monday i headed out to La Guajira to get attacked by some indigenous people. I had originally been considering camping at the other side of Tayrona National Park, but apparently the best campsites you have to hike to on foot, which is too much hassle when i also have a bike and panniers, and when i got there i almost had to vomit at the commercialism anyway.
I mean, getting out of Santa Marta going east it was a tough ride. It's something like a 400m climb, which isn't heaps, but on this heavy bike it was pretty difficult. It felt good to push, though. Just forcing myself up a mountain road, there's something peaceful about the exertion, especially on the moments when no buses or trucks were zooming past. And of course the cruise down the hill was incredible.
But then i hit the hostel row. From the southern entrance to the national park (near the summit of the pass) to the eastern entrance of the national park (near the water) all the way on to Palomino it's just hostel after hostel after hostel. Or, like "eco lodge". Or "natural hotel". Or whatever wanky name they're trying to give to places that are same as any other hostel, just on the side of a mountain. And there was a parade of very white people with backpacks and flowy clothes and flip-flops walking around from hostel to tienda and back. And... i just felt like... i can't do this. I can't stay in a place like this. I don't know what irks me so much about it, but it just gives me these horrible exploitative feelings. I can't explain exactly why these rural hostels bother me more than a concrete box in town.
Because that's where i ended up in Palomino, after struggling across two or three more steep hills of about 100m each, right along the Caribbean coast.
Palomino is one of a dozen or so shabby villages that developed around every river trickling north from the Sierra Nevada. You get this hilly, jungle landscape, maybe some banana plantations, then as soon as there's a river there's a little settlement with some fruit stalls, some guys BBQing up plantains and chorizo and arepas... Most all of the settlements have a couple of tiendas where you can buy water and beer and coke and a llantería where you can buy tires. (Amusingly, on that day i passed two buses that were pulled over by the side of the road changing their tires while the passengers stood around looking miffed. I'm sure the llanterías do good business.)
I checked into a hotel where i think i was the only person staying overnight. I liked it because the staff were friendly and they let me put my bike in the back on the ground floor. Till about midnight there was battling accordion music blasting from several nearby bars, which might've annoyed me if i wasn't so tired from the ride that falling asleep was trivial.
I also decided that evening that Santa Marta was clearly cursed for me, because for the first time in my traveling life, i forgot an entire bag of shit at my previous accommodation. Like, not just a toothbrush or a phone charger or pair of socks. My whole toilet bag. So i wasn't able to brush my teeth that night, or apply moisturizer that my skin desperately needed, or wash my hair, or put deodorant. And the next morning was an expensive exercise in re-buying everything.
Then i headed on to Riohacha. Except i didn't fucking make it to Riohacha.
When i was cycling across Turtle Island, by the end i was making around 100km per day, some days more, occasionally a bit less. Santa Marta to Palomino was around 70km, but there was something like 800m of hill-climbing, so i figured i should probably be able to push myself the 90-100km mostly flat to Riohacha. Yeah, nah. Because after about 50km of rolling hills and trees, you hit a straight-up desert. And that's when the 35km/h headwind which i had sneakily been escaping by hiding behind trees and hills up until this point smacked me straight in the face.
It was brutal. No trees for shade any more. Wind just blasting against me, every step felt like i was pedaling through molasses. I was barely breaking 10km/h, and with 30km to go i just resolved to stop at the next town - Camarones. Camarones had actually been recommended to me by a hippie i had met while getting an arepa that morning. He ambled over to me and struck up a conversation and tried to sell me tickets to a full moon party happening this weekend in Palomino, then tried to sell me weed, then took down my number so he could call me just in case i still wanted to buy the stuff i had just said i didn't want to buy. He and his partner were jugglers, but i'm not sure if they were travelers who also juggled or just local street performers in town for a gig. They were trying to get back to Santa Marta. I gotta say, i was very tempted by the idea of going to a psytrance party in the jungle - it's been years since i've been to a proper outdoor doof - but i didn't really want to sit around in Palomino for three more days waiting. So the hippie told me to go to Camarones, camp on the beach, drink beer, smoke pot, then come back two days later.
Camarones is actually not on the beach. Kinda like all of the "beach" towns along the trunk highway, it's several km inland, and there are small roads that go down to the beach. For a good chunk of the coast, none of the beaches are public - the only way to visit them is to spend the night in a hostel that's on the beach. But in Camarones you can actually get down to the water... Although it's more of a mud flat than a beach.
I only found this out the next day, though, because by the time i got to Camarones i was about to collapse from exhaustion. I found a hotel in town designed exactly the same as the one in Palomino. I've started seeing these all over the place now - three concrete pre-fab units high, with a spiral staircase in the middle. They're a budget hotel design, 60,000 pesos per night (around $20) but spotlessly clean. They remind me of my favorite hotel chain in China - 7 Days Inn. Cheap, clean and bare-bones. If you only traveled in the US, think Super 8. I love these kinds of accommodation more than anywhere else. Unlike a hostel, you can just pay and not have to socialize with anyone. You get a private room. Private bathroom. They're usually located in a more industrial part of town, or next to a market, convenient for traveling workers, but not really for tourists. There's always somewhere to booze nearby, but it's a watering hole for locals, not a backpacker meet-up spot. Love it.
Anyway, i actually did socialize a bit more than expected at this hotel, chattering to the front desk guy about learning languages. He was bilingual Wayuu and Spanish, and was trying to learn some English. He was impressed i had cycled all the way from Barranquilla and said i made the right decision to stop overnight because Riohacha was a tough ride.
He wasn't wrong. The next morning i rode out to the "beach", which is right up next to a national protected area for pink flamingos, in the hope of seeing my favorite bird. Sadly i did not see a single flamingo, although i did see plenty of goats.
I had a chat to some of the local people living down there too, and they were super chill. Said they could take me out on a canoe into the lagoon and try spot some flamingos, but i honestly told them i had no cash left, because these small villages do not have banks or ATMs, so i needed to get to Riohacha before doing anything else.
It was grueling. It was only about 20km, but the sun was hot and the wind was fierce all the way. It reminds me of when i made it over the Rocky Mountains in Canada and got into the prairies thinking they'd be a breeze, but boy was i wrong. Praries, savanna, desert, whatever you want to call it, it's so much tougher to ride than mountains. At least in the hills occasionally you get a break, you get some downhill, you can take shade under a tree, or next to a cliff. When you're on the plains, if you're going against the wind, you're just fucked.
I was very pleased to get into town. Riohacha turned out to be a shabby "former glory" kinda beach resort town, which is my favorite. And it has a real beach! Finally! A public beach that you can get to without paying anyone, a wide beach, a beach that isn't completely covered with shelters that some assholes are trying to charge money for you to use. The wind was intense and the waves were crashing way out past the Mary statue on the end of the pier. I sat there and let the wind ruffle my hair and breathed in the salt without any touts ruining my day.
I already like this town. It feels like Barranquilla again, but smaller. I had to stop in at three or four different hotels and hostels till i found one that had private rooms and space for my bike, but i am pretty happy with this place. The front desk guy was helpful in giving me information about how to get to Cabo de la Vela, and completely open to me leaving my bike and panniers here while i go on that trip into the Actual Fucking Desert.
I'm excited. Cabo de la Vela will be my first excursion into "sand everywhere, no roads" desert since visiting Namibia, but this time around i can speak the lingua franca, which'll make me feel like less of a tosser when i try jump into a share taxi with locals. This part of the journey is basically the only place i had on my South American bucket list, so i hope it doesn't suck. But if it does suck, oh well, still got a bike, and that's pretty fun to ride around no matter where i go.