Palomino - Days 22 - 23

The exhaustion from the previous days meant we had fell asleep early; that, combined with the sunrise 6 AM meant we didn’t sleep in too late, but we sure didn’t set any alarms. After gathering our things we got a taxi over to the bus station (again). As we had been there a couple times we were pros at finding our bus – we wandered around until we found one with a paper sign in the windshield reading “PALOMINO”. It was already full and still filling up so Meg got the last two proper seats on the bus while I quickly grabbed 4 empanadas filled with who-knows-what. After bulldozing my way to the seat Meg kept for me, we discovered that the who-knows-what was delicious chicken. Nice! As the bus was filled to capacity and then some, we didn’t stop as much along the route, at least until we got to Tayrona where everyone got off the bus except us and a handful of others. The road to Palomino was a gorgeous coastal highway though, so that was nice. The classic Colombian speedbumps were annoying but we started not noticing them. We got dropped off at a gas station on the side of the highway; there was a row of little shops and some dirt roads between the highway and the sea – Palomino! We picked one of the roads and walked a few blocks until we found Tribe Guesthouse.

Tribe was a real cool place, the spacious backyard of a house that the owners had converted into a small hostel. The backyard had a great little pool, hammocks, patio, and 3 cozy rooms. The owners were a young Colombian couple from Bogota, Alejandro and Andrea, who spoke English so we were able to get some solid recommendations from them for our time there. After settling in, we packed our day packs for the beach maybe a kilometer down the dirt road. The beach was white sand and went on for miles! We picked a spot and had some wonderful beach reading time while fairly secluded save for the few beach vendors selling beer or pot brownies. We did have one visitor though! A

little french bulldog puppy who was VERY playful! After I got bored reading we went into the water – the signs said no swimming due to currents, and there were pretty big waves, but there were plenty of people in the water so we went in anyway. We, well mostly me, body surfed in the waves for a while which was a good time. Meg did too for a bit but didn’t seem to enjoy it quite as much since the large waves tossed her around a bit, so she went to play with the pup more. We did have one casualty here though, one of the bigger waves I was riding tossed me around a big and my second silicone wedding band was lost to the sea. I mean in fairness they are a half-size too large so they slide around a bit, and I got a 4-pack of them, but at this rate I will run out of them before we get home… :-| Whoops.

Back at the hostel we jumped in the pool for some pleasant, still, non-salty water, and played a few games of cribbage on the patio. They didn’t go well. For dinner we decided to go to a pizza place directly across the street from the hostel – recommended by both the internet and Alejandro. The pizza place was actually stellar. Stereotypically, South American pizza is pretty garbage as the cheese isn’t very good, nor the tomato sauce. Usually the crust is bad too. These things are important to pizza. This place got it right though – I had a pizza with a honey drizzle that was absolutely fantastic! Meg had a Hawaiian pizza that was pretty good as well. It was rainy after dinner so we opted to head back to the hostel.

End of D22 cribbage score: Ben 44 (6 skunks) – Meg 35 (7 skunks)

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We hadn’t expected to do much in Palomino except laze around at the beach and do some river tubing, but Alejandro and Andrea invited us on a little “safari” to their land ~10 miles from town, so after Meg and I grabbed a decent breakfast of eggs and beans at a local place, we piled into their jeep with the Belgian couple who was also staying there

for some adventure. After an interesting drive to the land with 3 shallow river

crossings, we unloaded at Rio Negro – a very pretty spot 5 miles past an indigenous village. We did some hiking along and through the river which turned out to be very pretty, and went swimming in a few places in the river where the water pooled. Back at the jeep, I realized I didn’t have my sunglasses, so I ran back along the river with Alejandro and Eva (a very good girl) and fortunately found them. I think Meg rolled her eyes a bit at me for that, but to be fair I was the only one of us with my original sunglasses. We took the jeep back into town around noon and got some lunch at a local place Alejandro picked, the same place we’d had breakfast that morning! It was good though, and cheap so we didn’t fret.

We didn’t stick around the lunch joint long as we’d made plans to go tubing down the Palomino river that afternoon, one of the highlights of the town and something I’d looked forward to after reading about it numerous places. Alejandro talked us into hiring a “guide” for the float so we hopped on the backs of a couple motortaxis (dirt bikes) while holding our tubes and daypacks, and drove out of town into the hills for 15 minutes or so. When we came to the end of the road we hopped off the bikes with our tubes at a trailhead; this is when it started to rain. We walked for about a half-hour while the rain

intensified – apparently we had to cross a small mountain range to get to the freaking river. When we made it there (rain continues) we realized the guide didn’t have a tube, just a life jacket! He’d be basically just next to us the whole time in the water. Too late to tell him we didn’t need him there, so he roped our tubes together and we jumped in our tubes in the fairly cold river. Most people start the tube ride in the morning I think, so that, combined with the rain, meant we were the only three on the river. We cracked open some of the beers we brought in a dry bag and tried to drink them before the rain filled the cans back up (just kidding it wasn’t thaaaat bad). So there we were, floating on down towards the ocean. We’d come to a shallow spot and our guide would get up and walk sometimes, and he’d kind of steer us away from the river’s faster spots, but he really wasn’t needed. When we made it near the end of the float the rain kind of let up into just a light sprinkle, so that was something. Even made a little froggy friend who hopped a ride on Meg's sunglasses. Overall, still a fun experience despite the rain, and the end where the river emptied into the ocean was very cool! The ocean waves were crashing into the river almost trying to put the water back upstream, so we swam in the mayhem between the river and the ocean for a while, jumping back from the river into the ocean which was considerably warmer. We then walked back up the beach towards Palomino while watching a massive storm approach as lightening struck the ocean just offshore frequently. When we made it halfway up the path to the hostel the downpour started so we were just laughing about the ridiculousness of the situation.

Once we were dry we saw that the rain had grown stronger so we found a table that was covered in the hostel and played some cribbage. The rain grew stronger. The power went out. The Belgian couple joined us in the small shelter and played monopoly (we didn’t play because I know what monopoly is) and Alejandro brought us a candle and told us that this

is the hardest it’s ever rained in Palomino! Cribbage went better today than yesterday and the good guys swept the series. We were going to try somewhere new for dinner today but then the rain became stronger still and we said screw it and went to get pizza again. We got drenched in the 10 second walk to the pizza place, but they squeezed us in at a table with a bunch of other travelers. We ordered a bottle of wine to enjoy by the candlelight and made conversation with our fellow pizza-havers, two from the states and two from Belgium. We swapped stories and got some advice from Californian Courtney about Laos and Vietnam while we enjoyed our pizza – I had the same pizza as last night with the honey, and Meg tried an artichoke ‘za that was really good as well. We talked late into the night and were invited to hang out tomorrow but we had a short time in Palomino and had to catch our bus back in the morning so we said our goodbyes and ciaos and headed home.

End of D23 cribbage score: Ben 47 (7 skunks) – Meg 35 (7 skunks)

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