Friday 23 August 2019.
Highlights: Tayrona National Park Hike

Easily the hardest physical day on the tour we had a full day hiking in the Tayrona National Park leaving the hotel at 8 am and returning around 3.30 pm. The walking part was probably 5 hours and a lot of it was ups and downs small hills.

At our furtherest point Cabo San Juan de Guia

While a lot of the hike had wooden paving to avoid us damaging the park, a lot also didn’t and you were still pushing off rocks and leaning on them then or grabbing trees for support when climbing up. The heat and humidity could be a quick killer.

Over the course of the hike I drank:

• 2 litres of water
• 2 x Spirite Bottles (400 ml)
• 2x Coca-cola Bottles (400 ml)
• 1 big cup of pineapple juice

And this doesn’t count the water before the hike or immediately after. I think that was just enough to stay hydrated but I’ll have to watch myself tomorrow.

The two major stop of the hike were beaches at Arenilla (were we had lunch) and Cabo San Juan de Guía (were we had a swim).

Our guide Christian spent a lot of time pointing out key features. At one stop we were joined by local indigenous people who were selling coconut water.

We also got to see lots of wildlife in particular lizards and monkeys.

This was an amazing National Park and a hard but worth it hike. We also got lucky with the weather, while hot and humid it could have been even hotter. We had a lot of cloud cover for most of the day. Still I’ll sleep well tonight. In the end I can say I made it!

Exhausted but I got there in the end