San Andrés

This place is a well organized money making machine for the locals. The tour vans have a tie up with one of the local shack huts. All the tourists are invited to go in. These places have joint lockers which people can share to store their valuables while they frolic in the mud. At least, this service is free. Each of these shacks then provide a person who can carry the phones and cameras to take pictures, of course for a charge of 4000 COP. This charge is per person irrespective of number of equipment. So, if the 3 of us wanted pictures from the same phone, he would charge 12000 COP else he would make sure only one person is captured in the pictures. We decided to use only one phone and I negotiated a price of 8000 COP for the 3 of us. When we reached the top, Maria found the mud and the place quite disgusting and decided to drop out, so we took our phone back from the "photographer" and gave it to her. He, of course was not happy about it and kept badgering her with words. But, there was not much he could do since even Maria had fully paid the entry. Now with the camera with Maria, we got some very good pictures. I was first in and as soon as I was in the mud the "helpful" locals started putting mud all over me. Hristo who was following me down the ladder, kept reminding me "there's no free lunch, particularly in Latin America". So I kept telling them "No necesito" and tried to move away. But, I found that getting onto the stomach didn't help at all since the body would float above the mud and it was not possible to swim. Luckily, by this time Hristo reached the bottom of the ladder and the locals pounced on him instead.Read more