We went against FCO advice leaving Medellin and crossed into the FCO Orange, as opposed to the 'Green is OK', zone. No particular reason but that's where the route we chose took us. Well it was recommended to us by Albert, a Scottish biker who had been living in Latin America for the past 26 years. Françoise wanted a palm fringed beach. We couldn't get there in one hit, so dropping a pin on the map at roughly the right sort of distance we left Medellin and ended up in Dabeiba. And there was a fair old racket going on when we got there! So we wandered across the road from the accommodation to one of the liveliest bars, sipped our Coronas from the bottle, (it wasn't the sort of place to ask for a glass) with all the blokes wearing their hats with their shawls over their shoulders. And there is no cigarette smoking ban here yet. The bar was busy and the tables were pretty loaded with bottles both empty and full. There was an open urinal at the end of the bar. Paul tries, and fails, to wear his Panama all the time, especially inside; he says it's just too hot!
Music was blaring out onto the street, not just from the bar where we were, but from every bar in town and we are not talking about American/UK chart successes, recent or old, dubbed or original. This was Colombian something or other. There was also the loudspeaker blaring out about buying lottery tickets, the smoke from the food vendors as they prepared their meat skewers, the supermarkets with their sacks of beans spilling out onto the street, the many different types of banana lookalikes onsale and the kids doing wheelies along the main street on their motorbikes. This really felt like South America. More music started after we had gone to bed and continued until 04.00 in the morning. Over our breakfast of eggs, arepa, plantain and rice and beans we asked the hotel staff if it had been a special holiday? Indeed so they said. It was a Sunday...
Onwards to the coast and we hit a little offshoot of the Caribbean at Necocli where we stayed 10m from the ocean in a beach chalet - one of only six at the place - an Albert recommendation. Thank you Albert. And the sea was substantially warmer than showers we had in some of the accommodation in Peru - yes, it has marked us. The plus side of limiting our daily mileage because of the heat is that we can get to places early enough to have a few hours to do something. In this case bath in the Caribbean... The accommodation was also home to five dogs, a couple of cats, hens and we even saw a couple of red squirrels in the trees. Not sure how they get on with the coconuts?
Necocli was a palm-fringed beach on the Caribbean but Françoise wasn't satisfied. She added 'remote island, preferably coral' to the specification. So we ended up in Tolu which was a funny scruffy little seaside town. However in the mornings, boats left from Tolu to the Parque Nacional Natural Islas Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo. And one of the islands was called Isla Tintipan, which almost sounded as though it could be Belgian. Another Albert recommendation.
So at 0830 we waded out to the boat. There was no quay or jetty in the Tolu 'puerto'. And after an hour and a bit on the boat, having sailed past a few isolated coral islands, we were dropped off at a private sort of beach with 20 other people and spent the rest of the morning there with lunch being served. Mad dogs and Englishmen? We were scorched and singed.
But, 'If you like Pina Coladas, and gettin' caught in the rain'...
