Capurgana – Day 1 : boats and swimming

Tonight, we’re in Capurgana (go see the fucking map widget we’re always talking about!). To get there, we did our longest trip yet (aside from the transatlantic plane, evidently…).

Yesterday we took the night bus at 11pm in Santa Fe (or rather 11:30 pm including the delay), wo we arrived at Necocli in the early morning, around 6:30am. The bus was probably one of the best we’ve had yet. We might not have had the most wonderful sleep, but compared to what we’re used to travel in here, this one was big and comfy, with USB plugs for charging and even a good AC. Well, a too good AC, as it was probably set to the freezer option. But we had already encountered this problem before, so we came prepared: we had our jackets with us when we boarded (even though it was 25°C in Santa Fe!).

Necocli is a small coastal town, not particularly ugly but not very beautiful either. But it is where the lancha for Capurgana departs (another goes from Turbo, which saves you bus time, bus it’s much slower). So besides eating a small breakfast, buying the boat ticket and changing some dollars (for Panama), we mostly waited until it was time to go (theoretically 9:30am, but with delay 9:45).

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Sunrise over Necocli’s port

We were the last ones to enter the lancha so we got lucky, we got the back seats. The front seats are way bumpier! In the lancha (which, by the way, is a small boat in which you can squeeze up to 70 people) we looked at the sea, but after a while it was boring so we mostly slept (the trip took over 1h30).

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A bit of fresh salty air !

Once in Capurgana, we decided to start searching for our accommodation. That’s when we discovered a slight problem in our plan: this weekend it’s fiesta in town to honor some local specie of snails (can’t remember the name, do your own goddamn research!). So, it’s loud “music” everywhere (I’m open to many styles of music, but this ain’t music, it’s the usual shitty summer disco pop soup, but in Spanish!). Add to that the fact that Monday is vacation day for the Colombians (so hordes of them are coming on the coast this weekend), and you understand our problem regarding finding a place to stay for tonight.

Fortunately, we remembered the name of a hostel that was supposed to be a bit out of town. We we’re just on our way there when a local taxi (so a horse and a two-wheeled cart) proposed to take us there. We had the good idea to say yes, because the two-wheeled cart might be jumpy, but at least it kept us dry when we had to cross several rivers created by yesterday and last night’s heavy rains.

The hostel itself is quite charming, set in the middle of the jungle, far away from the loud music of the town. And there are lots of animals here! In a couple hours we managed to see many birds, some lizards, monkeys, iguanas and even a basilisc (sadly not the harry potter thing, but a funny little four legged animal 😉). We were in luck, the hostel had one room left (not the best room we’ve had, but sufficient for now and the surroundings are really cool).

In the mid-afternoon we went to the beach near the hostel to bathe for a while and tan a bit. It’s a bit weird for us to tan at the beach after all these days spent in the Andes mountains. After this we essentially spent the rest of the afternoon in hammocks watching TV shows (we do need to rest a bit sometimes!). This evening we ate dinner at the hostel with a nice Columbian family here for the week-end.

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The beach near the hostel

That’s all for tonight, more news in the next post.

P.S: In Capurgana there is no 24h electricity and finding an internet connection can be complicated, so of course at the hostel in the middle of the jungle we don’t have internet (but we do have electricity several hours a day, phew!). That’s why this article will be published whenever we can.

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