We woke up in the Eco Hotel Chayrama. Our cabin let in a lot of natural light, so we were up early. My brother and I walked around the place, and he got some photos of a giant grasshopper on our cabin porch.

Soon enough my mom and dad were awake as well and we went to get breakfast by the pool. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed our breakfast outside.

We also particularly loved the wild scarlet macaw that apparently just hung around around the hotel. I think he was hoping to have some of my fruit.

After we finished eating we took off for Tayrona Park, a beautiful natural preserve along the coast.

We got our tickets and headed in. We parked and started off hiking towards the beach. The weather was hot and humid, and there was a bit of a climb up and then back down towards the beach. Thankfully on one of our little rests we did see a long string of monkeys making their way through the trees. I have to say, after a trip to Costa Rica the year before I had really anticipated seeing more wildlife, but sadly a lot of the animals in Colombia are more shy and therefore not as easy to see. I was just glad we got to see this one little glimpse of jungle life.

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The park was beautiful, and though we were pretty warm and tired, we enjoyed the walk down to the beach. We reached La Piscina–a natural enclosed ocean pool where we stopped and had some fun swimming, laying on the beach, and even snorkeling! We saw some very beautiful tropical fish in the clear waters.

The hike back was the really exhausting part. The weather had become almost unbearably hot, and with how humid it was being damp didn’t really help. In fact if anything my wet swimsuit was very uncomfortable to hike in.

We arrived back at the car hot and exhausted. On our way to our next hotel we stopped and grabbed a grocery store lunch before driving on our way.

Our next hotel was just outside of the city of Santa Marta. It was called Casa Verano, and was absolutely gorgeous. After such a long and exhausting hike, it was nice to just have a relaxing afternoon by the pool enjoying some fresh tropical fruit juice.

After resting for a while we headed out to grab some dinner. We went to an Indian fusion place called Babaganoush. The sunset as we drove there was lovely!

The food was really good. We had some crab cakes and pumpkin soup as starters. My brother and I both got cocktails, a strawberry daquiri for me and something different for him. We even had some dessert to treat ourselves after our long and exhausting day.

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It was a pretty fantastic day all in all. We headed back to our hotel to get a good night’s rest, ready for another adventure the next day.