Departamento del Magdalena

Back with a brand new 🐧. I've been in colombia one week now and really enjoying it, arrived into Cartagena on the evening of the 9th after a pretty stressful journey and went straight to sleep at my hotel. The next morning I had a nice chat with the owners which was a good chance to practice some of my Spanish (which I've realised is very rusty..). They helped me find a bus to Santa Marta and werre generally very nice and accommodating, they were showing me lots of pictures of their grandkids.

I left the next day to Santa Marta on a ~6 hour bus journey, all went pretty smoothly although we did have to change busses once. I then had to get another taxi from Santa Marta to a place called Bonda which I managed to haggle down to a good price, and then finally get a motorbike taxi up to the hostel where jodie was teaching yoga since the dirt roads aren't accessible by a normal car. I stayed with Jodie for a couple of nights at this place, was really nice and chilled. Surrounded by jungles and rivers where you can swim. We also spent some time taking some yoga photos for jodies website here using my new camera/tripod as the scenery was really nice.

After a couple of nights at this hostel, we headed to our next destination which was an ecolodge (essentially a fancy hostel) recommended by a friend of mine. On the way to this new place, me and jodie stopped at a Pharmacy in Santa Marta to buy some new soap but we both forgot that 'sopa' means soup and not soap. We had some very confused looks from the till lady when we asked for soup for the body.

When we arrived in Minca, it was another motorbike ride up in the hills to get to the hostel. This ride was a lot bumpier than the first one, my driver was crazy and kept trying to go fast up really steep rocky hills, I was holding on for life! There is a slightly more expensive option to get a 4×4 jeep instead which is what we used after that point.

When we did get to the top and arrive at the hostel, it had to be the nicest place I've ever stayed in whilst travelling. Place called Mundo Nuevo, high highly recommend. It has amazing views over Santa Marta, Minca and the surrounding mountains. There is an amazing infinity pool which overlooks the view and loads of nature around the hostel. They had a mixture of dorms and private rooms, we had a nice big private room with ensuite and great views. The general age of travellers in Colombia is much higher than in Southeast Asia which has been nice, and there was also a couple of families staying there. Nearby to the place there are some waterfalls, hikes, walks, bird watching and also coffee/cacao tours you can do in a nearby indigenous village. The sunsets were amazing every night, we also caught a sunrise one early morning. It was a great place to relax, whilst also doing some of my coding work and Jodie has been working on her yoga business. I'm very limited with only 10 photos to upload so need to be very selective, I have so many nice photos of this place that I could do another post quite easily!

We went down into Minca a couple of times by jeep, once with a group to watch the Copa America final which Colombia were playing in. Sadly they lost in extra time but the atmosphere was crazy, they cheered for everything Colombia did and were throwing foam around everywhere! The pace of south American football is so much quicker than European football.

Now we are in Cartagena where we will spend four nights before potentially going to a language school for a week in Medellin!

Stay frosty.🐧Read more