La Guajira and El Cabo De La Vela

The idea of atrip to the Guaira desert came up suddenly and almost from nowhere. Carnival was finished, but we hanged out a bit longer in Barranquilla, as some people needed to recover before heading to their next destination. We were sitting around in our room; me, Troy and Matthias, when Troy suddenly said: “Let’s go to the desert”. I liked the idea and said I would do it if they would. Mathias was also excited, and that is how we basically decided in five seconds to go to the Guajira. We had no information what so ever about the region; the lonely planet, the most popular English guide, had nothing written about that region. We just asked the staff and the hotel, and they all pointed us towards El Cabo de La Vela.

It takes around 5 hours to get from Barranquilla to Riohacha, but it took us much longer. First our bus did not leave until it was filled up with passengers, which took about an hour and half. Midway to Santa Marta our trip was interrupted by a road block; people from a shanty town next to the highway placed some logs and branches and blocked the road. The reason was that they had no electricity for five consecutive days. A power line got broken, and no body cared to come to fix it yet; something that probably takes half an hour to fix. But somebody did not do his job, and now we all have to wait a few hours on the highway. I totally understand these peoples protest; making a road block seems to be the only way for them to be heard in this country. This reminds so much of Bolivia, where these kinds of road blocks are a common things, and just part of the daily life there.

We finally made it to Rioacha, but only at 8 in the evening. We met a couple of local chicks on the bus, who wouldn’t leave us alone, and helped us find a hotel when we arrived at the city, then it turned out they were strippers, and they tried to convince us to come to there club, or buy them food; basically just get some money of us. It would take a little more than a couple of fat strippers to get me to go a to a strip club. We stayed at hotel Mataimi, a nice secure hotel, with a very friendly owner. The city of Rioacha though is a not a very nice place, just it is an essential jumping spot to get to the interesting places in the Guajira region. Me and Troy has arrived there already, Matthias our Swedish friend, and the last member of the Guajira expedition, had to go to the border with Venezuela because of visa issues. He arrived the next morning, and we all went to get some supplies for the trip: chips, snack bars, alcohol, etc. Then we took a Taxi to Uribia, a small shanty town next to some mine. We were hungry and we checked a couple of restaurants in the town, but we just could not get our selves to eat in one of those place, they were the lowest standard of restaurants I have seen in the whole of Colombia. We decided we could wait until we go to Cabo de la Vela.

Our transport to El cabo a pickup truck, we went on the back of the pickup truck with the locals and couple of Colombian tourists. 12 people in total were packed in the back of a pickup truck, plus luggage. The road to El Cabo goes parallel to train tracks, which were built for load trains carrying materials from a mine to a port near El Cabo. We had to wait for one of these trains when we were about to cross the tracks, it must have been at least 1 Kilometer long, and it took a few minutes until it passed. The pickup truck stopped many times on the way, to unload passengers or supplies, which were mostly loaded on the roof of the pickup. It seems this was the main supply trucks for all the little tiendas (shops), scattered on the way between Uribia and El Cabo. The pace was slow because of the continuous stopping, and it took us more than 3 hours to arrive. We arrived to El Cabo at almost sunset. There we stopped about every ten meters to unload something, it seems that they run errands for all the people of El Cabo; the people give the pickup truck driver there orders and money, the drivers buys it from Uribia or border town of Maicao, and delivers it back the next day. The main settlement is composed of one main street going parallel to the coast. We could not much tourists around, but we did see a lot of basic accommodation, and restaurant, very basic. Apparently during holiday a lot of Colombians come here. First they were going to drop us in the main settlement block, but we did not like it there so much. So they drove us further up the beach, into the peninsula, and dropped us off there at some cabañas, about half an hour walk from the main settlement.

It was already getting dark and we decided to stay there for at least one night. But we ended liking the place and stayed there for the whole week we were there. The owner was a very friendly lady, and the place had a restaurant up on the second floor, with a nice view over the bay. We slept in hammocks, but the lady gave us a key to one of the cabañas to store our stuff. The place was pricier than the main town, but worth the money, and anyway we were still only spending 40000-50000 on average daily, that’s about 20 dollar. Not to mention that they have power plugs, which meant I can charge my laptop and keep writing in the middle of this remote peninsula.

La Guajira is a strange place that does not feel like the rest of Colombia, more like a remote place on some undeveloped country. There are no electricity or water grids; electricity comes from generators, and water is probably delivered by container trucks. The main source of income for the little settlement seems to be tourism, but there does not seem to be much of them around here at the moment. They get waves of tourism during the Colombian holidays, but seem to have little to do between those holidays. There is some fishing going on, but I think it is only to provide for the settlement of El Cabo. The only vesicles around are tourist SUVs (those of rich Colombias, coming here for a few days vacation), the pickup truck that leaves once a day to Uribia, transporting people and bringing supplies, and the occasional tourists bus that takes people up to the light house. It is not uncommon to see people drunk in the night and acting strange. Mostly though in the night, the settlement turns into a ghost town, there are only a few places with electricity and hardly anybody on the streets. The moon though is bright; when during our stay it was between half to full moon, and it made it possible to walk around the peninsula during the night, even without the help of a flashlight.

El Cabo is were desert meets sea. We stayed on the peninsula, which is connected to the main land by a strip of flat land about 1 Km wide. The peninsula itself is between 2-3 Km wide, and 6-7 Km long. The beach on our side is very calm, flat surface with no waves; it looks more like a lake than the sea. The wind blows very strong though, the gusts sometimes get so strong they would blow up sand and lash our skin with it, which can be quite painful.

Troy is a talented guitarist, and he plays music that he comes up with himself; it is always good to have a good guitarist on a remote place like. I also played the few guitar songs I still remember, and managed to sit down and do some writing as well, not as much as I wanted it to though. Matthias on the other hand had no diversion, not even a book. Matthias was also disappointed with the place; he was expecting some kind of beach resort with chicks running around in Bikinis. So it was no surprise he was the first to leave, me and Troy stayed a couple of days longer.

I wanted to go try fishing as an extra diversion, we had no fishing gear though, and I decided to walk up to one of the fishermen on the beach, and try to get him to take us on a fishing trip on his little dinghy. But communicating with him, and the rest of the locals for that matter, was quite a challenge. Generally the coast is a difficult place to speak Spanish for a gringo, they have a different dialect in which they don’t pronounce all the litters and swallow the words. They don’t seem to be very talkative either, they would often just sit there and say nothing back, or just mumble short sentences of one or two words. We would often have to repeat our order several times before they understand it, even for very simple things like Agua (water). The people there are mostly descendents of indigenous Indians, and some of them speak their own language besides Spanish, which they use to communicate between them selves, it kind of sounds like Chinese. Anyway the fisherman did not seem excited about taking me with him on the boat, so I changed my strategy and asked him if he could sell us fishing gear. That seemed to work, he told me to wait for him, he went back to his home, and brought a couple of hooks and fishing lines. We agreed to pay 10000 for each. Then me and Troy tried fishing, during the night at our beach, and during the day at some rocks on the other side of the island, but without any luck though. We tried every possible bait, crab, lobster, shell fish, fish strips and sausage. I even caught a couple of live crabs once and just hanged them on the hook. I think we have to go on a boat a little deeper to catch something; there did not seem to be big fish at the shore.

Walking around the island was our main diversion though. On our first excursion we reached the light house, which is at the tip of peninsula. Strong gusts of wind blow up at the top of the hills. Our next excursion was to beach which we spotted on our walk to the light house the day earlier; very beautiful beach, lying in a bay protected by a mini peninsula branching of the main peninsula. We were the only people on the beach when we arrived, but later a few SUV tourists arrived. Besides us there only a few tourists in El Cabo, mostly Colombians driving around with their SUVs, and some french travelers; apparently the French guide to Colombia, unlike the Lonely Planet, does have some information on El Cabo. Our third expedition was the most ambitious though, we decided to walk along the coast of the peninsula, and to go as far as we can until we ran out of water to drink. We stopped at the close by tienda to have a cold Coca Cola before starting, and stock up on water and snacks, and then we headed out on our adventure. We tried walking on the beach whenever it was possible. We reached the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula, then went down to the nice little beach we visited the day before. After that we walked to the tip of the mini peninsula, and then continued down the coast. Unlike our side of the Peninsula, this side was rocky, with steep cliffs at the edge, with waves smashing against it. Whenever we saw a nice beach we would try to find a way down there, to relax there for a while and throw a fishing line. At the distance we could see a mountain, the highest top on the beach, and the last one before the peninsula ends. We made it our goal to reach the top of that mountain and we managed it; we made it to the top, which provided a great view of that side of the island, then we headed back to our hotel. It was about a 45 minute walk, but this time we had to walk against the sun, so far we had timed our hike to perfection, we walking westward in the morning, then heading back eastward in the afternoon, but we went further east than our hotel, and on the way back we had to walk towards south west, straight into the sun.

The first thing we did when we arrived back was to go back to the tienda, and drink couple of cold Coca Colas, then we went to the hotel and ordered our lunch. If there is one thing to complain about in this place, it is the lack of variety in food. The menu consists of sea food only; there are two types of fish Pargo and Mujarra, and there is also Langoustines (pricey but good). They always come with arroz, patacon (fried Banana) and a small salad (consisting of most onion). The fish is good but how many days in a row can one each fish. The only variation we had was when they made some spaghetti and French fries instead of rice and patacon, I can’t tell how good it was to finally eat something different. After the sixth or seventh Pargo, I decided I will have no more fish. I can’t imagine how these people eat the same meals day after day. Back at home if my mother cooks the same dish two days in a row, there would be a lot dissent. At least couple of weeks would have to pass, before it would be alright to cook the same dish again. Middle eastern home made and fast food is one of the things I most miss while traveling in south America. After a week in El Cabo though, I was even starting to miss things like a good hamburger, pizza or Pasta.

There is some wild life around here, I found a baby snake at our shack. I and Troy played around with it and filmed it before I put it on a stick and throw it away. We are used to having snakes around, he is from Australia and I am from Israel, two hot countries. Matthias our Swedish friend, on the other hand would not come within ten meters of the sneak. Later we told the locals about the snake, and they told us it was a very poisonous snake, and they were surprised and kind of reproachful that we did not kill it. There were geckos, whom for a long times I though were birds, because they sing like birds. There were 50cm long lizards, that stay still and blend so well with the background. I had a few encountered with those during my hike; they don’t move until I almost stepped on them, then they suddenly appear from no where, and take off in a sprint, and keep running until they are out of sight. There are goats around the island, they probably belong to someone, though I did not see any Shepard’s around. At the beach there are many crabs; and they come in many varieties: There are white ones that live in holes in the sand, and mostly come out at night. Dark ones that stay on the black rocks, and I have seen some red ones as well. There are also red lobsters that live inside shells. I have also seen a sea a fist size sea snail washed out on the beach. When we came back from our long hike, we wanted to take a swim at our beach to wash out all the dust, sand and sweat. I was about to enter, when I saw that there were jelly fish in the sea. I hesitated then I decided I would go in for a quick swim, avoiding the jelly fish, Troy joined me as well. A minute later I got stung around my thighs, on both legs, just above the knee. Troy was stung exactly at the same time, around his ankles; some kind of a coordinated jelly fish attacks on the human swimmers. We scurried to get out of the water as soon as we felt the stings, but it was too late; the stings were extremely painful. I also started to develop a rash around the area of the string, and the terrible pain went on for an hour before it subsided.

The local women here are skilled with netting; they make bags and bracelets of different sizes. I ordered one especially tailored to fit my deck of cards. It only cost me 2000 pesos (less than a dollar), I would have been willing to pay twice as much. They just don’t seem to know how to take advantage of the situation, i.e. charge more for a special order. Anyway I think someday tourism will kick up in this place, and prices will go up higher; El Cabo is a perfect spot for wind or kite surfing.

To leave El Cabo we had to wake up at 4 in the morning, as that is the time the only pickup truck leaves to Uribia. From Uribia we took a taxi to Rioacha and from there the bus to Santa Marta.