Sleeping on the Beach In Colombia 🇨🇴

Harry walks into Tayrona National Park with three people he met at his hostel the night before and sleeps in a hammock on Playa Brava, a beach reachable only on foot. He calls it the best experience he has had in Colombia.

Almost every decision in the video was made by other travellers. Which entrance to use, which of the park’s two beaches to sleep at, and what the difference between them actually is — all of it came from people walking the other way, including the detail that decided it: a hundred-plus people sharing four toilets at the popular beach. It is the second sighting of that habit and the one that promoted it to a page — ask travellers coming the other way.

The beach is quiet because you are not allowed to swim there. Harry looks at the red flag, says he doesn’t personally think the waves are that big, and obeys it — and then spends the video explaining why the restriction is the best thing about the place.

There is one thing he deliberately doesn’t show. The village on the trail let him film but not for social media, so he filmed nothing.

Key moments

• [00:00] The plan: a two-to-three hour hike in, sleeping on the beach, leaving at 7 a.m.
• [00:30] Checks out and leaves his main bag at the hostel; a bus or motor-taxi to the entrance.
• [01:39] The park fee: 70,000 pesos, about £15 or $18.
• [02:09] The group — from California, Poland and Paris — met at the hostel.
• [02:09] What you are supposed to bring: a passport and a yellow-fever certificate. One passport between four was enough, and he hadn’t had the vaccine.
• [03:10] Why the Calabazo entrance: quieter, slightly longer, and the main one is full of tourists.
• [03:41] A monkey.
• [04:11] Leafcutter ants routing a column under the path rather than along it.
• [05:12] A ten-minute climb to a viewpoint a family living on the trail told them about, with someone camped on top of it.
• [06:16] Fresh juice at a farm — he calls it lemonade, it turns out to be orange, naturally sweetened.
• [08:45] The Dutch traveller walking out who had slept at both beaches: over a hundred people and four toilets at Cabo San Juan, and Playa Brava better.
• [08:45] And why it’s quiet — you can’t swim there.
• [10:48] A coconut on the trail.
• [11:27] An indigenous village on the route; a tour for 10,000 pesos each, filming allowed but not for social media, so he films none of it.
• [13:34] Down to the beach, and the red flag.
• [14:09] The current is too strong; he says the waves don’t look that big to him and follows the rule regardless.
• [15:11] Accommodation: tents cheapest, hammocks, or private cabins. He takes a hammock and is steered to the enclosed kind because it gets cold.
• [16:13] No signal at all, which he likes — a forced detox.
• [16:43] Cabins are $50, the same as he had been paying, and he chooses the hammock on purpose so he can tell people what it’s like.
• [17:46] Moving out from under the coconut palms.
• [18:46] A waterfall ten minutes away, 10–20 metres, into a cold freshwater pool.
• [21:14] Nothing booked for tomorrow and no idea where he’s going.
• [21:45] The habit stated outright: travellers have done the things you’re about to do, so keep staying where you meet them.
• [22:15] The morning verdict — woke four or five times to the waves, slept like a baby, would do it again.
• [24:18] The camp: pool, volleyball, a fire, a restaurant; horses 80,000 pesos each way.
• [24:48] Next: Cabo San Juan, then Minca.

Extracted pages

• Colombia
• Playa Brava
• Tayrona National Park
• Ask travellers coming the other way
• Ride out past the tourist strip