Playa Blanca, Colombia

Playa Blanca, Colombia slideshow

You can take a 45-minutes fast boat ride and go directly to Playa Blanca. Or a three-hour ride on a big slow boat, visit Isla del Rosario and the Aquarium on the way. I hesitated. Is this another touristy trap that will keep me hostage for three hours and not see anything interesting after all? I went back and forth in my mind on what I should do and asked for the fast boat ticket without much conviction. The clerk handed me the ticket, I looked at it and vacillated. The clerk was nice – they are almost always nice south of the border. Yes, I could change.

The ride was too long and not so interesting and the Aquarium only kept my attention when the dolphins did their show, but I am not complaining. At least I got to stay at Playa Blanca for five days and almost everyone else returned to Cartagena on the same boat only a couple of hours later.

Warm, vivid green/blue turquoise water reflected small colorful fish through my goggles during daily swims at the Caribbean sea. The beach was blissfully quiet before and after the boats arrived, and on Monday there was peace all day as no large boats arrive on this day.

That is, there was a lot of peace at Playa Blanca, but not complete, only minus the vendors of necklaces and bracelets, the massage girls, and the fruit, coconut, ice cream and desserts vendors. The latter I consider were providing a service since I loved the fruit and all the eatable items. But some of the vendors, the ones selling things I did not want but did not want to give up selling them to me, were border line harassing me.

But life was good at Playa Blanca. I slept in a tent in a very secure “oasis”, composed of a few hammocks, tents, cabanas, a full bar and kitchen that turned up fresh coffee every day. Fruit was always available by vendors on the beach and there was no shortage of fish meals. Beer and any kind of drink was also prepared to order by our host, in addition to lobster, prawns and fresh fish. The owner was a mean-looking macho guy but he knew how to smile and be nice at the appropriate times. Although his macho ways did not jive with me in any way, I was very happy to see how he kept the place very organized, clean, and everyone else who did not belong there, always an arms length away. And that is all one needs in a such a warm culture as the Colombian, when a five-minute talk is all one needs to consider you a friend or even an intimate.

The bath was the hard part. It consisted of an allotment of a few buckets a day. But all I needed was to shake off the salt from the sea anyway, so life was really good. Lots of food and drinks available, comfortable chairs with parasols at the beach, and guests to hang out with when I was not reading my Paulo Coelho book in Spanish, “Valquiria Decide Morir.” I read three of his books the last month an.d that did a lot for improving my reading and comprehension skills in Spanish.

But eventually I got tired of life in paradise. I missed the Internet, counted the days and realized I needed to keep moving in order to see everything I wanted to see near Cartagena and be in Manaus in time to meet Peter. So I left on the big boat that afternoon, five days after my arrival.