Tyrona

What an incredible place , oozing in wildlife: Snakes, Caymen, monkeys, donkeys, unidentifiable creatures including some kind of big rodent!¿ various spiders with colourful bums, tropical birds, many insects...Panthas roam the jungle but stayed clear of the more human areas. Though nowhere is really safe at dark, when animals come out to hunt and play.

To get there i ended up travelling with a friend, Jeremie, whom I met at a monkey rescue centre in Ecuador. We, for some reason, went the long way round and had to walk for ages with heavy bags through the national park to get to the beach. It was a hard walk, loads of steep bits and epic rock climbing. One wrong slip and you fall into a 20 meter ditch. It took longer than we expected, too. 3 hours turned into 6 hours. We stopped of once to eat cheese and bread, and watched indigenous children play innocently in the river. After more walking, the sun set. It got dark and we were lost in the jungle. Spiders and snakes showed themselves. We heard monkeys and i tryed not to let my mind dwell on jungle cats. It was tres Indiana Jones style and flashes of horror movie set ups kept blessing me. But we survived to tell the tale, and had fun along the way. It got to the point where could either made fun of the situation and laugh and joke our way through it...or cave into our tiredness and collapse into the jungle bed with little hope. Or perhaps kill one another as an outlet for our frustration. The later was our choice. Seemed like an interesting test of character!

The first camp site we got to seemed pretty tourist soaked and smelt of rotten fruit and crap. We had walked thus far and thought, whats another 60 minutes!? So off we set to the next camp site. Along the way i saw the biggest blue crab i have ever set my eyes on! When we arrived at the next site we stayed. It was peaceful and all i wanted was to shower. The shower was a bad experience though. Insects made a carpet on the floor, and im not sure if i had more bugs on my legs than i did water whilst showering. I was pretty grossed out. Big beatles, flying things, crawling things, creep me out things everywhere. Shower was super quick. Also that night someone stole a bottle of rum from the tent. And tried to steal food, but got caught in the act. A pretty adventourous day. The next day we found a nice camp site!!

Beautiful camp site: Finca Don Pedro, Surrounded by coconut mango and avocado trees. Set ten minutes away from the beach, and with perfect entrances to incredible jungle walks. Death by falling coconut seemed highly possible but thankfully i survived. Bringing food made it much cheaper and it was great to be able to cook everyday. Coconut rice, pasta and chunky tomato sauce, scrambled vegtable eggs, simple things but tasty none the less.
I spent long days doing yoga in the morning, dipping in the ocean, buying chocolate bread from a little bakery, wondering the jungle, witnessing natural wonders, playing on my guitar (and be taught by Jeremie...as well as helping him improve his English), trying to improve my spanish, enjoying daily cooking, getting into morning pages...and regular showers!

One evening the tent got totally swamped/ flooded by a strong down pour of rain and all the bags and shoes in the outside compartment of the tent floated! Tent had to be moved, but the next sunny day helped dry things out. I couldn´t stop laughing though. I have laughed a lot this last week. Sometimes rather inappropriately. Still, im sure its good for the soul.

Now back in Santa Marta sorting out VISA extensions and booking flights to enter the Amazon at the end of the month. May be going back to Tyrona next week. There is more sun bathing to be done, more chocolate bread to eat. And its a peaceful place to consolidate and reflect upon my journey, my intentions, my life. A good place to practice, to meditate and to simply be with life. Everything seems so alive in the jungle and along the rustic beach. For me, it evocks thoughts of how dead and fixed things can seem in more "civilized" environments. Where nature rules, everything has something to teach. Things are random, spontanious, all dance their own dance around you. Birds fly and sing in unison as the Caymen bathes his skin under the sun. The Ocean roars, a crab bumps into your big toe. Watchful, wonderful. I become more intune with the natural cycles of the sun and moon. The sky wraps a blanket of dark around me. Stars twinkle my spirit. The sun slows me. Im reminded constantly to expect the unexpected.