Once More Unto the Beach

'El unico riesgo es que te quieras quedar', that's what the Colombian tourism posters tell you, 'The only risk is that you'll want to stay.' It's a bit of an over simplification, probably for marketing purposes, but it also has an element of truth. Colombia is very far removed from the popular perception of it back home, I remember catching myself a few times wondering whether I could be arsed to lock my door, often I couldn't. Wanting to stay, however, is a very real risk.

Following our graduation as pilots we headed for Bogota which is, for me surprisingly, quite beautiful and made up of lots of interesting bits, some of which we explored when another birthday somehow crept up on me and then slipped away leaving me a year older but none the wiser. The climate didn't really suit me though and as soon as I found myself considering buying a coat I decided it was time to leave. So back I went to the Caribbean and the charming fishing village of Taganga.

There are essentially three things to do in Taganga: dive, fish and chill. We did a fair bit of all three in the end with varying degrees of success, including an Advanced Diving course which was to test some of our party to the limit and beyond. It was the deep dive that really sorted the wheat from the chaff.

The dive involved performing a series of simple tasks, first in the classroom and then at 30m below the surface. The aim being to see how well you cope with Nitrogen build up or something similar. Ricky and I were joined by a delightful young lady for the course and all three of us breezed through the basic maths and the child's shape association toy sections. Then came the tiebreaker. In keeping with two of the contestants, the format was fairly simple – we were all shown a common fruit or vegetable and asked to identify it. I said tomato, they said potato and we very nearly had to call the whole thing off. It turned out I was right and they were a pair of vegetable impaired idiots. Amazingly, this basic error did not prevent them from passing the course and, following successful completion of the night dive, we all graduated as advanced divers. Equally amazingly, for Ricky the moment of maximum embarrassment was yet to come.

Maybe it was too much sun, maybe too much beer, maybe it was the water. But for whatever reason Ricky shat his hostel bed not once, but twice. Obviously I was devastated for the poor lad and found it terribly cruel the way in which he somehow acquired the sobriquet “Shitter Guy”, becoming in the process something of a celebrity around the place and precipitating giggles from the very girl who had to clean his poo-soiled sheets every time she saw him.

Partly to give him a break from all the pointing and laughing, we went for a while to the more rustic surroundings of Parque Tayrona which, in the unlikely event I ever get round to making it, is likely to feature on the list of most picturesque beaches I've ever seen. Perhaps the most singular feature is the rocks which are granite and huge, but it also has plenty of coconut trees fringing the sunkissed beach. Altogether a very inspiring place.

We tried going back to Taganga after that, but people were still laughing at Ricky for having shat his bed, twice. So we took another trip, this time to Cabo de la Vela. Getting there was a mission. A taxi, a 4 hour bus, another taxi and finally a 4wd truck driven by a maniac who, despite there not being another car within sight (and you could see for miles in all directions), seemed to think it was some sort of race. Quite possibly the Indy 500mg to judge by the quantity of cerveza he was getting through before and during the journey. Largely because it's very flat and empty and he couldn't find anything to crash into, we did eventually arrive and found not so much a beach as a desert next the sea which had a haunting beauty all its own.

From there we returned for a third time to Taganga and the “Shitter Guy” taunts which Ricky got for having shat his bed, twice. And it was there that our triumvirate finally broke up. I'm not a big fan of goodbyes and it was hard to face the prospect of saying farewell in a single day to both Ricky and the cooler, the pair of whom had been staunch drinking companions throughout Venezuela and Colombia. The cooler, it seems, could sense this and the night before we were to part company it did a Captain Oates and slipped quietly away into the night. Cooler, if you're reading this, hope the travels are going well and thanks for everything.

I trod then a lone path to Medellin where, rolling back the years, the shoulder was well and truly dropped in an aircraft hanger rave. Following that a weird and amazing thing happened. Everywhere we looked, be it waiting for taxis or queueing for the after party, fit girls appeared as if from nowhere. Honestly, it was like something out of dawn of the dead only with hot chicks instead of zombies. In the end we couldn't cope any more and had to go home to ponder things in depth.

By which time my shiny new paraglider had arrived in Bucaramanga so I hot footed it back there and spent the remainder of my time flying it. Alas, I fear this blog entry is already a touch long without me boring you with the details of what that was like. It may one day be the subject of a separate blog, but for now suffice it to say that it was truly amazing and more fun the better I got at it. The only question was how to follow an amazing two weeks of flying there and the only answer was another trip to the Chicamocha canyon which turned out to be even better second time around and a perfect way to round off my time in Colombia.

The flying was not over, though, as I spent the next day on a succession of planes and had the dubious and no doubt costly experience of withdrawing money in four different currencies in the same day before finally reaching Barbados where I had time to pay a single visit to the beach and reflect on a very full five months of experiences. I had hoped to take some more money off the taxi drivers at backgammon, but someone must have tipped them off as they'd taken their game elsewhere for the day and all I found was a game of dominoes. I don't bet on dominoes.

And now? Now I'm back in Blighty wondering what I can possibly do to follow that and, once again, there is only one answer: Glastonbury beckons. If anyone fancies a pint give me a shout. Until then, chao.

Don Simon.

Photos as ever at www.don-simon.smugmug.com