Day 21- 4 Mile Trek to Cabo San Juan

On Monday, June 29th, at 7am we checked out of our "hotel" and left on a bus to go to Parque Tayrona. It took a while to get there and none of us had gotten breakfast. We had a quick snack and bought some water before we started our hike to Cabo San Juan. The hike was 4 miles total, which rocks, hills, and horse crap throughout. With the added heat, we were all really sweaty when we finally arrived to Cabo San Juan about 2 hours after starting the hike. Many other "hikers" opt for riding horses to the area instead of walking and for that reason, there was horse crap everywhere. Several times we were walking through a narrow area when we would realize that a horse was coming the opposite way. One time in particular, I tried my best to get out of the way, but it wasn't too easy due to the pathway. The horse's cargo ended up knocking me over, causing me to scrape myself on the rocks. The weird thing is that there's a path that's supposed to be strictly for those on horses. I don't know why we ran into as many horses as we did on our path.

Quick stop for fresh orange juice!

one of the beaches along the trek

Once we got to the beach, we ordered food and since it was going to take a while, we all decided to go ahead and get into the water. I finally got a chance to use my snorkel. In the water, there were tons of gold flakes. It was really weird, but when looking under the water, due to the sunlight shining though, I could see little shimmering gold flakes absolutely all around me. I realized while on the shore that there were the little gold flakes in the sand as well but it wasn't as obvious. But every here and there, you could see a gold flake glistening on the sun. I also found a portion of something ceramic, a bottom of a beer bottle, and at one point I found what I think to be 3 contractor/painter buckets that were overturned and had moss and stuff growing all over it. I didn't go too close to the rocks even though the rocks closer to the shore weren't really in a dangerous area. But our professor was adamant about wanting to be able to see us from where he was sitting at the restaurant and I wasn't sure if he'd be able to see me near the rocks and didn't want to chance his wrath since he had already gotten really mad at some students who went out really far to the shore break out near the farther rocks. (There have been hundreds of deaths due to the strong current and most of those people where foreigners) Around 2:00, we were able to claim the hammocks that we had rented for the night. I shared some spaghetti with another girl for dinner since the their plates were expensive and we're basically the same thing as everything that we've been eating here in Colombia. Later on into the night, it started to get a little cold. Since the water was already slightly cold, none of us wanted to go swimming. We decided to once again play Lagretto (basically Nertz). There was a large group of around 25+ people that decided to also play a game, since there really wasn't much to do. They were playing spoons, but with their empty beer cans. Due to the excitement of their game and their drunkenness, there was lots of yelling which went on pretty late. To try to fall asleep, I had to put earplugs in once again (thank God I brought earplugs to Colombia!!). I didn't have a problem with the hammock, it was just that it started to get fairly cold, and i (nor anyone else) didn't have a blanket. I also hadn't brought any form of jacket or pants since it had been so hot in Santa Marta. I tried sleeping with my towel, but it wasn't big enough to cover all of me and wasn't think enough to keep me warm so I woke up all throughout the night, freezing.

These were some big ants!