Colombia Waterfall Hunt 🇨🇴

The second half of the Tayrona pair, with the same two guides. They take Harry down into the jungle to a waterfall that isn’t a tourist attraction, isn’t signposted and isn’t reachable without knowing where it is — which he says outright is the reason he couldn’t have done the day alone.

The hike is the honest part of it. He calls it one of the hardest he has done and is specific about why: it is climbing over rock rather than walking, in heat, and you have to come back up the same way. Forty-five minutes each way.

The afternoon is a beach he didn’t know existed, a hundred metres off the main road, which he rates as the best in Colombia so far. Bracelets made by the mountain community he had visited the day before are sold on the sand; a 6,000-peso bracelet gets 20,000 from him.

He closes on what the two days added up to — that people living with very little seemed happy, and that money isn’t the thing. It is a sincere passage rather than a neat one, and he checks his own phrasing twice while giving it.

Key moments

• [00:05] Into the jungle with both guides, and a first look at the terrain.
• [00:36] Climbing down past a rock he notes could come loose; the scale of the boulders.
• [02:12] Giant green and yellow bamboo, strong enough to build with.
• [02:42] The pool at the end, in shade and cold.
• [03:17] Confirms they are just outside the park boundary.
• [03:52] In: perfect temperature, and a cut that stings.
• [04:54] It isn’t a tourist attraction at all — the guides brought him because it is a local spot, and he counts that as the point.
• [05:26] A sweet snack he compares to hard jelly rolled in sugar, or to icing.
• [06:26] A language barrier with the guides that he shrugs off — he doesn’t know where they are going next either.
• [07:00] A tree the guides put at 600–800 years old, said to live to a thousand, and how trees lean towards the light.
• [08:02] Why the hike is hard: physically climbing the rock, not the distance.
• [08:33] A shortcut back across private land, with permission asked at the house.
• [09:05] Colombia has the greatest variety of birds in the world.
• [10:46] Out to the main road and a 100-metre walk to a beach he didn’t know was there.
• [11:16] His verdict: the nicest beach in Colombia so far — palm trees, waves, mountains behind.
• [11:46] Bracelets on the sand, made by the community he met yesterday.
• [12:51] Asked 6,000 pesos, he pays 20,000 — about a dollar against four or five.
• [14:51] The economics of it: largely self-sufficient, but electricity and some other things need cash.
• [15:52] Back at the hostel, having extended and changed rooms.
• [17:55] The new room — bigger bed, a bath, no indoor shower.
• [18:26] The shower turns out to be outside, in the jungle, and cold.
• [16:23] The two days summed up: people with little who seemed happy, and money not being the thing.

Extracted pages

• Colombia
• Tayrona National Park
• Travel with a local guide