Hiking to a Nudist Beach in Colombia 🇨🇴

Harry walks out of Playa Brava with the group he camped with, over to Cabo San Juan — the famous beach, and the one they deliberately didn’t sleep at — and then out of Tayrona altogether, ending the day in Minca after dark.

The two beaches make the argument for each other. Arriving at Cabo San Juan after two and a half hours of climbing, his first line is that it’s heaving and he’s glad they didn’t stay. It is also, he says immediately afterwards, properly beautiful. Both go on the record: hundreds of people, four toilets for a capacity of four hundred, a tent field like a festival — and rock formations that remind him of Thailand.

The title’s beach is handled in about ten seconds. Realising the stretch before Cabo San Juan is a nudist beach, he turns the camera the other way and keeps it there, saying he doesn’t want to intrude on anyone’s privacy. See don’t point the camera at private moments.

The best thing in it is a dog that attaches itself to the group and walks the entire two hours out of the park with them.

Key moments

• [00:02] Setting off for Cabo San Juan with the group, heading for the easier exit.
• [01:05] Opening coconuts, badly, with a rock.
• [02:50] An hour of climbing, and he is soaked through. Hotter than yesterday.
• [03:20] Downhill is easier and worse on the knees.
• [03:55] Knocking bananas out of a tree with sticks, and eating them straight off it.
• [07:07] Two and a half hours to Cabo San Juan. An experienced hiker in the group rates it 4/10 for difficulty; Harry says 7.
• [07:37] The nudist beach — camera turned away for the whole stretch.
• [08:08] Arriving at Cabo San Juan: so busy he says out loud he’s glad they slept elsewhere.
• [08:40] Mostly Colombian visitors rather than foreign, because it works as a day trip.
• [09:10] The beach, the rocks you can sleep on, and a swamp behind it with a lot of rubbish.
• [09:40] A 20–25 minute queue for food; about $10 a meal, which he calls a little pricey for Colombia.
• [10:40] Swimming — deep quickly, current noticeable but manageable.
• [11:11] The first cloudy day he has had in Colombia, which he points out is good hiking weather.
• [11:41] Four toilets for a capacity of 400, and up to a thousand visitors in a day.
• [12:13] A woven bracelet for 10,000 pesos, worn on the ankle for lack of room on his arm.
• [13:16] A dog joins them twenty minutes into the walk out and stays.
• [13:46] Coca leaves for the walk — 5,000 pesos for a big bunch, bought from indigenous vendors in the park.
• [14:16] Whether they can feel it: he says he thinks so, and immediately concedes it could be placebo.
• [14:46] Two hours later, out of the park, and the dog is still with them.
• [15:18] Into Minca after dark — a small mountain town known for coffee farms and waterfalls.
• [15:49] A lot of Western food on the menus; he orders the local dish on a recommendation.
• [16:20] Coca lemonade, which he had had before and rates.
• [17:28] The platter: several meats, chips, cheese, guacamole, sweetcorn, potato, avocado — agreed by the table to be a hangover meal.
• [18:58] About $8 for his portion.

Extracted pages

• Colombia
• Cabo San Juan
• Playa Brava
• Tayrona National Park
• Minca
• Don’t point the camera at private moments