Chilling and swimming in Minca
The heat and humidity of the Caribbean coast was starting to get tedious so we decided our next stop should be Minca, a small village just inland from Santa Marta and up into the Sierra Nevada mountains. Because of the altitude the climate is a little cooler there and a few of our fellow respected travellers had bigged it up.
Andrew (remember him from Baños, Ecuador) was one of the people who had told us about Minca and he had recommended us to stay Casa Loma, so we did!
We arrived in the middle of the day with the sun blazing down and were faced with a footpath that switched back ten times and climbed 100m straight up a hill to where Casa Loma was situated. The climb was tough going with our packs on our backs but when we got to the top we were presented with this wonderful view. The town you can see is Santa Marta which is the next town along from Taganga.
We also were rather pleased with Andrew's recommendation as Casa Loma had an amazing central chilling area complete with hammocks and rocking chairs and with a vibe to match.
It also was home to this unbelievably cute kitten who's name was Tico but really should have been called Tica as it had turned out to be a girl not a boy. We both spent many happy hours playing with Tico during our stay honing our kitty playing skills in preperation for returning home to Mimi!
We spent the afternoon relaxing in the hammocks and reading as soon after our arrival the weather broke and the rain and thunderstorms set in. Our evening (and every evening of our stay) was spent sipping beers and playing huge amounts of backgammon and cards with Sam, Molly and Marta (volunteers at the hostel) and the other guests.
Before bed I decided to try a long exposure shot to capture Santa Marta's lights after the rain had cleared but I was lucky enough to also capture some fork lightning!
The next day we walked for an hour out of the village to visit a waterfall with a pool you could swim in. It was also rumoured to have a rope swing over the pool which we were pretty excited about but when we arrived the swing was hanging out of reach with no way to get hold of it.
None the less we had a great time swimming in the the pretty cold water that was extremely refreshing after the long and hot walk.
The next day Lau wasn't feeling very well so spent most of the day resting and sleeping in the hammocks - Tico kindly kept her company.
In the mean time I went on a solo mission to another swimming hole. This one promised rocks to jump in off and luckily when I turned up there were some local lads who were kind enough to show me the spots that were safe to jump into through my broken Spanish and some sign language. They also showed me some rapids that you could body surf through which was awesome!
Minca was everything we hoped it would be - a little cooler, more relaxing and arguably more beautiful than the coast only a few miles away.
And so we left Minca with heavy hearts, knowing that our next stop would be the last of our trip: Bogota. And also because we were facing an 18 hour bus ride to get there, eurgh! Can't win them all...














