Mountains and beaches

We headed north from Cartagena to Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta for cooler “jungle time” and birds..

… where an Andean Mot-mot posed for me even better than in Salento…

… and a Crested Oropendola posed on one of the nests.

This is how we got to the area to see the birds…

… as well as to the lodge that we stayed in:

(note the lack of helmet for the passenger)

This Red-bellied Woodpecker was quite brilliant

… as was the Oropendola -

(love his blue eye!)

So, after chilling out in the mountains, we headed to the coast to check out the national park - Tayrona:

The park entrance opened at 0800, but the lines we waited in didn’t get us in until 0900. We then had to hike one hour until the view noted above…

… but we got to commune with the monkeys along the way. Because it’s so popular, there was always someone in front of us or behind us for the whole 2 hours that we were walking.

Yes… it was two HOURS of walking…

… but the views were pretty nice along the way…

… until we got to the camping area (where tents are reserved months in advance!) -

I liked the contrast of the cacti and palm trees -

At the end, we found a beach that remained pretty deserted…

… but because we had to hike 2 hours back, we decided to wait and get wet back in the pool at our hostel. :)

It was a LOT more crowded on our way back…

… but we still enjoyed the views we had to ourselves -

On our drive back to Cartagena, we were solicited by roadside fisherman…

… caught some neat reflections…

… but also saw some pretty poor living conditions…

I prefer to remember the area as -

That’s it for Colombia. Until next time…