We only had a quick stint in Santa Marta so we used our time to hike the toranga national park, where the jungle meets the beach and a crazy horse ride through the rocky terrain will have you holding on for dear life. We ventured back to our hostel, made home made dinners and lazed by the pool before catching a 2 hour bus to palomino to stay the night and explore around the beach town.
Palomino is a sweet little get away and it's hard to believe it's such a short drive away from the hustle and bustle of the city. When we pulled up in our bus we were welcomed by the locals, who offered to carry us and all our luggage on the backs of their tiny dirt bikes.
The town of Palomino is made up of one long street where you can find all the market and vendor stores, then there's multiple roads branching off that lead all the way to beach front hostels with jungle views. We stayed in hostel dreamer, and only moments after we had arrived we were back on the dirt bikes ready to go tubing in the near by river. As we started to drift down, we were approached by one of the locals who advised us that due to the rain it would be very dangerous to tube, avoiding his advice he decided to come with us and after a litre of rum and vodka, we finally drifted all the way down to the ocean with only a GoPro fatality. Tubing is definitely one of the best activities you can do in Palomino; surrounded by the jungle, drink in hand, slowly making your way down the river with all your mates seriously can't be beat and at $5 for the whole day you'll be hard stretched to find something better.
To get the most out of Columbia we found ourselves on the road again, after only enjoying one day/night in Palomino. We took a shuttle east of the town to a mountainous coffee village called Minca.
When we arrived we were greeted with a strenuous hike up a vertical mountain to our tree house hostel; Casa Olma, by far the most amazing view point to watch the sunset into the horizon. We spent a short night and day taking in the town, practising yoga, busking with the hostel volunteers and sleeping in hammocks before heading back to Santa Marta to catch a bus to the busy town of Medellin.
If you're strapped for time and you want to see the best of what Columbia has to offer I suggest each one of these towns as they all differ from one another, have their quirks and are cheap and easy to travel between.
Medellin, here we come!!
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