On Being A Badass

And so it was that I shouldered my carry on bag and headed into the jungle. Parque Nacional Tayrona, as you may have deciphered from my last entry, was way too photogenic for just a day trip. Courtney, Erik, Pat and I stored 90% of our belongings at our hostel in Taganga, stocked up on water and strode into the wilderness for a few days this week to experience what more we could of this big, jungle-y, beachy wonderland. We had little more than hammocks and peanut butter and we felt blessed.

It was amazing to use my body after so much time in physical hibernation. The paths there were like video games, made challenging enough by all the logs and rocks to cross that my mind couldnt click into autodrive. I fell in the mud and didnt have a change of clothes for the next two days and it felt good.

We walked by this.

And this.

We were feeling, in a word, badass. So we did the badass thing and set up our camp on a secluded beach, up on a wooded hillock above the sand. We figured wed call the bluff of all the people who said we had to camp in the predetermined ¨campsites¨, who said the police patrolled for squatters at night. I mean, a national park in Colombia, really?

Perfect spot it was, covered yet breezy. For two hours we had the best time. And then, clearly, we got busted. A whole flashlight cartel, we realized looking out into the inky night, was making its way down the deserted beach straight for our camp.

We tore down the most visible parts of our home and extinguished all lights. I held my breath and every scary myth about Colombia and its people in uniform sent my heartrate skyrocketing.

The flashlights finally reached our hillock. I wondered if theyd have guns. They passed over the hammock in front of my and stopped. I heard a hssst and then a cavalcade of Colombians in beach wear bounded up the path to our camp screaming ¨Policia! Policia! ¨ One guy had on a 50 Cent shirt.

There were no guns. They all looked younger than twenty. I regained composure and strode up to them.

After a few rounds of questioning, it appeared that these men and boys were not police at all, but employed by the land owner- bizarre, as we were in a national park. Despite the vagaries in their story, they said they´d like it if we´d leave and not light fires anymore in Tayrona. We acquiesed but asked if we could finish our dinner and would they like some. This might have been their first dinner invite from campers they had evicted and they were understandably a little confused. But, mealtime being somewhat of a sacred rite in Latin America, they allowed us time for food. Quite the tableau, the four of us eating carrots and noodles out of a single cooking pot with our fingers while the Colombians watched us like we were zoo animals. During this period they twittered around, sussing out our woefully truncated temporary home and, as was discovered later, stole my headlamp. Jerks.

50 Cent led us back to Camp Cabo, where we had recieved the warning about camping on the beach a few hours before. We were embarassed. And sad about losing our set up:

Sometimes, you cant call their bluff. Meh.

But needless to say, it didnt end the chapter. We flipped backwards off rocks that looked like seals and stumbled across ominous blue spiders with leg spans as long as a cigarette. More importantly, I got back to nature after a long time in the city. And some exercise. And a new story. Well, that´s a given.

Love, Colombia- I mean, Caitlin.