The Caribbean: tayrona,palomino,exit

One of the most popular things to do in the coast of Colombia is to go to Tayrona national park, a protected coastal region with lots of different beaches. The pictures look beautiful and everyone we had spoken to said it was great. However we weren’t super impressed with it as there was so many people there and we all felt funnelled into this one walk way that you had to walk through. The walk was 2/3 hours and once we had arrived to the beach you could actually swim on ( as the Caribbean coast is mostly dangerous for swimming due to the strong rip tides), we felt a bit disappointed. There were rows and rows of tents pre re-elected which made it feel tacky. It felt quite uncomfortable too as this area is where indigenous people live and it’s clear that the massive income generated from tourism is not going towards supporting the indigenous people living there.

We then spent a strange night inside the park at a hotel where I have never felt so unwelcome. needless to say we got out of there quickly.

The next stop on the map was Palomino, a self described hippy town. And it certainly was, we didn’t feel super comfortable again as the disparity of wealth felt so stark. The main strip towards the beach was pretty fancy and bougie, but then you looked down any of the side streets and there was real poverty. We ate at a local restaurant and whilst we were there people were coming in to get drinking water from the restaurant. There were indigenous people begging too and it just wasn’t super comfortable so we decided to cut our losses and leave without staying the night.Read more