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Minca
Entry 14 of 332 | show all | print this entry |
Somehow 7.30 - 8.30am disappears very quickly. We are off to Minca in a utility fitted with seats, a camionetta. This leaves from 11 Calle and 12 Carrera about every 1.5 hours or so. It is hot, hot, hot today in Santa Marta.
Minca is only about 45 mins away from Santa Marta but it is in the Sierra Nevada mountains, some of which reach 6000 meters. The climate is much cooler than Santa Marta and it is a delight to escape the heat of Santa Marta. It is a great place set in the jungle with excellent walking trails and lots of birds. This time I managed to slip off a log bridge into the river again to Barb´s and the locals amusement.
Met an irish couple bird watching and they told us that in the early morning there were countless birds and it was difficult to focus on which one that they chose because there were so many.
However, the downside was sandflies! We had not gone prepared with repellant and our legs by the time we left were full of perforations. We were not the only victims!
There are many flowering plants and a relentless sound of cicados.
Some of the birds seen were crested oropendulas, hepatic tanagers, swallow tanagers, doves, blue gray tanagers, martins, rufous tail jacamars, black phoebes, and humming birds.
It is a good place to spend a week, providing one has plenty of insect repellant. We visited a hostal where two women were staying. It was a very pleasant place and we are considering returning tomorrow to stay for a few days. Jackie and Betty had been "yachties" cruising the world on their own yachts and were now retiring. Chris, a German who has owned the place for 10 years came to have a chat and brought us a cup of his coffee from his own coffee plants. Like most Colombian coffee, it tasted pretty good.
We returned to Santa Marta and decided to return to Minca, tomorrow.
Saturday 24th Feb.
Yesterday's camioneta left Santa Marta at 10.30am, so after an early session on internet we rushed with our huge packs back to catch the 10.30 vehicle. Alas, today it went at 12 noon, but gave Barb a chance to buy some fruit and bread. Just as well, as Minca is very short on shops. Walking the kilometre or so uphill in Minca to hostel Sans Souci with our packs was pretty tiring. We reinforced ourselves with a tamale at the bus stop before trudging uphill (why are our packs getting heavier by the day ?). At tea time we tried to find a restaurant, unsuccessfully, and so fed ourselves on boiled eggs, jam, and uninteresting bread rolls. There are lots of birds around so we are looking forward to tomorrow.
Sunday 25th February
Off we went birding at 6.30am, but alas, the birds did not know they were supposed to be awake. So it was back to Sans Souci for breakfast then a snooze before tackling our grubby clothes in the outdoor wash trough. The main walk for the day was to Pozo Azul, a pretty water hole where the locals picnic. It was not very far, but with Barb having her binocs glued to her face it took quite a while. At Pozo Azul we lunched off (now stale) bread rolls and 'tuna with salad', which turned out to be tuna hobnobbing with bits of carrot and highly mobile green peas, which refused to stay in the roll. The sandflies found gaps in our repellent, so it is another day to itch.
On the return we heard loud dance music coming from behind. A ute full of very happy people waving their arms overtook us. We joined in and salsa'd along the road. They stopped and poured us a generous tot of rum, then went on their noisy way leaving a very happy Pete and Barb behind.
Part of the deal at Sans Souci is that if you work around the block for a couple of hours the rent is reduced by 5,000 each. Pete tackled a weedy area but did not last long because of the clouds of mossies. Barb was given a machete to chop the dead heads off orchids and ginger plants. It seemed like sacriledge, but she got the hang of it and spent a happy 2 hours slashing away. The activity took her mind off the sandfly bites, which now itched feverishly.
We headed into town to have dinner, and were told that nothing was open. We were starving. Anyway, after many questions and 2 very greasy empanadas later we were directed to Fernando's, on the Santa Marta road out of town just after the sandbagged police station. Fernando and his wife sure knew how to cook, and for 7,000 pesos each we ate like kings, chicken, rice, patacones and a real salad. None of those 5% tomato and 95% onion things we had seen all too often. While we ate the children amused us by capturing cicadas and putting them in a coke bottle. They had to be quick and get them in one grab otherwise the cicada growled ferociously like a dog.
Back at Sans Souci we yarned with Jackie and Betty before bed.
Monday February 26th
The national park at San Lorenzo beckoned. The road there is allegedly very good for birding. San L is at 2,200 metres uphill in the other direction from Santa Marta. We were a bit slack about getting up so it was not till 8am that we headed off uphill.Chris said we could wait for a vehicle, but it would have been a very long wait. We had walked for well over an hour before anything came past. This was another camionetta, crammed with school children and their bags. We put our feet just inside the tail gate and hung on for dear life as the vehicle careered round bends and over a road that would have been sealed maybe 40 years ago but was without maintenance and full of holes. The ute was about a 1948 Dodge, 8 cylinders, and would have been defected many years ago at home. It gulped down about a litre of oil every 2 kms or so on the very uphill sections. The inevitable puncture happened, but they are skilled at that game, it took all of 10 minutes to change the wheel. We were dropped at El Campano and pointed in the direction of La Tagua, from where a road goes uphill to San Lorenzo. After another hour walking another camionetta overtook us, and we piled on. This was much worse. The contents of the ute, human and goods for sale, were tossed around into a heap of eskys, bottles of soft drink and arms and legs. We got off well short of La Tagua as we figured we had gone far enough or we would be hiking back in the dark. Barb was very relieved, but Pete takes precipitous drops and a rocking vehicle much more calmly. two passengers got out of the tray and hung on to the tailgate at one very steep spot, ready to leap off if we fell over the edge, no doubt.
The walk back took us about 5 hours, with lots of stops for birding, and not one vehicle other than motor bikes passed us. Chris says they seem to come back after dark, which would have been doubly terrifying on those potholed roads.
It was Fernando's again for dinner, tonight with meat done on the hot plate. Like last night, the food was delicious. On the road back Barb managed to get a cicada up her trouser leg. It was horrid, with this growling flapping thing at ankle level, till a war dance shook it out. Guess what, Pete laughed and offered no help.When we rolled into bed we forgot to turn off the outside lights, and every cicada in Minca came to sing to us. Barb tackled one with a broom stick, but it just went to sing at another window. All night they shrieked at us. The noise is deafening. Barb couldn't hear her bird notes on her digital recorder. We made a recording of the cicadas, but no-one will ever believe us that they were so loud. At 3am we were so fed up with being kept awake Pete got the fly spray and gave them a dose. That worked for a while ...
Tuesday February 27th
Barb doesn't want to be stuck in buses for her birthday tomorrow, so it was another 2 days at Minca or move on to Riohacha today. We decided to move on, after some more bird watching - the birds are very busy this morning. While waiting for the bus to Santa Marta we watched a small boy chucking rocks at cicadas clinging to a phone pole. The locals by now must be totally fed up with them. If they had to suffer this all year they would all be bonkers, so we assume they are seasonal. Also while waiting for the bus a bull ant crawled right up Barb's trouser leg and bit her, guess where ? The pain was intense. The bus dropped us on the main road that by-passes Santa Marta, and we were quickly shunted on to a decrepit but air con bus headed for Riohacha. Barb has always been curious about Riohacha, having read mention of it in Marquez's book 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. It wasn't in the least romantic, just a hot town, hotter than Santa Marta, with a couple of rows of palm trees along the edge of the sea.
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