Flight booked for Ecuador

Yesterday and today have been mainly chill-out days after the exhaustive Ciudad Perdida trek. In fact it's becoming so hot here that after 5 minutes of moving around you feel ready to fall back into bed (which isn't a good thing on my limited itinerary!), plus there are no ACs in Taganga (save for the small one in the town's single Cajero ATM enclosure!) so lethargy is really hard to throw off.

I spent the entirety of yesterday getting laundry done and washing EVERYTHING that I had taken with me on the Lost City trek. I'm talking everything from bags to shoes to camera cases. EVERYTHING got covered in sweat and moisture! Yick.

I managed to focus for an hour today and booked a flight to Quito, Ecuador for Wed 17th Feb, leaving from Santa Marta with a layover in Bogota for 8 hours.

Cost about 260 euro on Copa which seems to be the cheapest going rate, and it doesn't matter if you book months in advance or the day before, it's the same price.

So that leaves tomorrow as the last day in Colombia and I'm going to try to take a bus/taxi to Barranquilla to get in the last day of the Carnaval de Barranquilla (apparently the 2nd largest carnaval in South America after Rio de Janeiro... yet I'd never heard of it until last week!). The last day is supposed to be a water festival, so cue getting splashed with buckets of contaminated water and the high probability of destroying my camera equipment.

Sure it'll be a bit of craic, and I will finally get to take in a Carnaval!

As for today? Just gonna sit in my room escaping the heat and writing up my Ciudad Perdida trek blog .. I'd head down to the beach, but it's a long weekend and there is a large crowd of locals in town with their kids. The water tends to turn yellow rather quickly as a result. Their disregard for the environment is pretty shocking too and each morning you can find a fresh pile of rubbish getting washed up.

It's a shame as Taganga is such a beautiful bay and a nice swim mid-week when it's empty except for the smelly jewellery-making hippies that pervade the place