Tayrona National Park

 

Borealis Sunday 30th April 2023

At 8am we arrived at Santa Maria, still in Colombia. Compared with the flamboynce of Cartagena, the port looked shabby, though there were still some high rises in the distance. The port looked all the less attractive because of the storage of export coal, and the silos full of maize. Santa Marta is the oldest Spanish settlement on the Amercian mainland. It is also reputed to have a pretty town centre. However, most of the passengers had booked excursions to take them away out of Santa Marta, to a coffee farm, to the historic indigenous Taironaka settlement or (as in the case of Albina and me) to the Tayrona National Park. 

Initially as our coach eked its way through narrow road adjoiing the wtown centre, I noticed some spectacular and soulful graffiti in vibrant colours on the street walls. They seemed to show aspects of local life and birds and were presumably the result of a community project, rather than the work of individuals. One of the murals appeared to be almost 100 metres long as iy contined along the entire length of one block and seemed to be a narrative of some sort. All this I glimpsed as our coach shot past. But that did not prevent me from noticing the poo state of yhe pavements alongside these splendid murals. The responsible administration was obviously failing the community even when the community had made its own remarable contrubution to the appearance of the city. 

As we travelled there I noticed that the area was poor, the quality of the roads and of the suburban and rural houses, and rubbish lay everywhere, probably not collected for weeks. We crossed over a seemingly complete railway track along which people were walking, as if on a road, including a father with a small child. In the meantime our coach reflected that poverty, with seats that were not upright, safety belts that did not work and a microphone system that did not work either. The two guides, alternating between themselves, talked to us from two ends of the coach. They spent a lot of time talking about the lore and customs of the Indian population.  We learned about why they all chewed coca leaves as a substance that sustained their strength and their well-being, and how an attempt to link it with cocaine production by earlier authorities had contributed to the earlier partisan war by the peasants against the government. The election of a left wing president in the last year had led to a reduction in tension, as the promises from the earlier ceasefire agreement was slowly being implemented. One of the guides went into a long explanation of how the indian population in the Tayrona Park lived in different tribes, wearing different hats, participating in different economic activities, at different levels of altitude. However, they all carried their paporo produced from a pumpkin and filled with sea shell dust, which was presented to them on reaching a responsible age, mostly at 13 years old. From the state of this paporo, which they have to carry, their elders could tell if they have led good lives, and would punish them with incarceration or slave work, if they did not. To me it sounded like mini Chinese Communist Party levels of control, with less sophisticated, but equally effective, methods of social control and conformity. We were being bombarded with constant new strange names for different aspects of this Indian customs and culture, which struck me as increasingly primitive and irrelrevant to our needs in visiting the Park, but at least we learned that education at school and university level was now more accessible with the new government. Did the pupils take their paporo into class? Sometimes these paporos would be manufactured in pink gold, an alloy of local gold and copper, with beautiful ornaments. Many of these were plunderd from unmarked graves in the hillsides of the Tayrona Park. This practice has now become illegal and there is an attempt to have some of these paporos restored to Colombia from foreign museums.  

We were travelling now on a good quality road, which was part of the Pan-American Highway, until we turned off onto a glorified dirt track which happened to be the park entrance. The Tayrona National Park is now owned by 4 out of the 120 Indian nations living in Colombia. It is a vast area containing most of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a mountain range with 3 peaks at 5700 metres (Colon, La Reina, Bolivar), which are separate from the Andes. They contain a massive amount of plants and trees, wildlife in the form of caymans, jaguars, monkeys and lizards, insects, not to mention 2000 different species of birds, as well as the site of an ancient indigenous city.  

Eventually, we disembarked for a walk across very rough terrain and our two guides split us into two groups and led us through the forest. We were shown a wide range of flora, including mango and banana trees, and the pumpkin tree from which they produced their precious paporos. We came across armies of green ants marching with single-minded concentration along straight highways, carrying all sorts of leaves heavier than themselves. You needed to step across their half hidden path without disturbing them. "Reminds me of the Ho Chi Minh Trail," I joked with Ranald, who was also on our coach party with Sharon. There was a big ball hanging from one of the trees, which turned out to be a termite nest. Unlike their castle building cousins in Africa, these prefer to work from the safety of a tree. 

We trudged in the 33 degree heat past huts and even a restaurant prepared for rich visitors "roughing" it overnight in the forest, until we came out on to a beach. There was a strong surf, white sand and even a little bar with drinks, as well as shaded tables, where we stopped for a few minutes. The beach brought us no joy, because we had not been warned that we would be trudging through soft sand under a hot sun, and none of us had been advised to wear beach wear. Albina was exhausted by now and I needed to help her as we trudged back to the coach after our two hour trek. We saw one shy monkey and a couple of lizards, but had seen no other animal. We did see one of those native chieftans or Mamos in their full traditional dress, sitting at a table. I asked the guide if I could photograph him, but the Mamo signalled a "no". He was too busy, but with his mobile phone, not his poporo. 

We were then told we were travelling back to the ship. We had had no opportunity, as we walked through the dense undergrowth, and then the open beach, to take any pictures of the mountains which were such a central feature of the Tayrona National Park. Also there was no stop for buying souvenirs at the entrance, including examples of their much heralded pink gold ornaments. What with the rickety coach, the guides rattling on without microphones about strange aspects of Indian life, the heat and the unexpected beach, I found this possibly the worst excursion so far, even worse than the stopless coach trip in Nagoya. Others tended to agree with me. 

It was my intention at the end of the tour, to have a quick lunch on the boat, and then slip out for a quick half hour or so to the town centre of Santa Marta, to take a few photos. The town centre was apparently just a 20 minute walk from the ship and a taxi rade would have cost around 3 dollars. During our journey out we had been driven straight out of the port onto the rubbish strewn suburbs, missing out both the Spanish town centre and the more prosperous residential areas. After all, the small but picturesque cathedral I had seen on photographs was the oldest Catholic church in the Amercan mainland and worth a visit, however fleeting. Also Albina's Polish friend Marta had actually asked us to send her some pictures of the town centre, as she had always been fascinated by this remote Soth American town which bore her name. There would just have been enough time for that, as it was now about 2.15pm as we approached the dock, and the boat was due to sail at 4pm, Unfortunately, as we neared the dock, we were subjected to a sudden rain storm accompanied by thunder and lightning. We watched as the side streets were suddenly engulfed in torrents of water pouring along the high pavements, and where no pavements existed, along the formerly dusty road surfaces, carrying all the rubbish forward. The rain eased just enough for us to jump from the coach onto the ship's gangway, but then resumed its intensity. It made my planned outing to the Santa Marta town centre impossible. It was very frustrating, particularly as the ship's stay was extended because one of the returning coaches from another excursion got waterlogged from the rain. Ironically, as we waited for this coach to return, the weather suddenly improved, the clouds parted and I could normally have made the journey.

As we waited for the ship to depart we became aware that the air conditining on the ship was no longer working. The captain made an announcement about his engineers working on the problem. He repeated this apologetic explanation two more times during the course of the evening. It became warmer inside the ship inside than outside. All that heat from the Colombian jungle now seemed trapped with us inside. We were all getting sweaty and uncomfortable. Even at the evening quiz, we sat perspiring. Albina had earlier opened wide our cabin door, but our friends in the lower cabin were unable to do that. We joked about them all piling into our cabin for a party.

By midnight Albina and I had changed into our pyjamas and lay on our bed with all the sheets off, trying to sleep. I just remembered at the last moment to move our two watches an hour forward.