11.14.2528 N 74.12.3968 W

Unfortunately the last 24hrs leading up to leaving for Santa Marta were not ideal. Nick and I managed to contract a kind of 24 hr violent vomiting and diarrhea bug. I came down with it within an hour of writing the last email update. So we has a bit of a rough night and then managed to sail (with the much needed help of Matt) the short distance (2hrs) to Santa Marta the next day.  We arrived here on Monday and managed slowly to check in and get us legally into Colombia. Once we were able to we headed off into town to explore. By this time Nick and I were back on our feet and ready for food. Santa Marta is a very vibrant place with lots of history and interesting buildings. There are many lovely places to eat out and everything is very cheap (we had a 2 course meal with drinks for 3 pounds each!). We also managed a few drinks for Matts last night. He then left us very hungover for his adventure home (5 days of flying and hotels). We really enjoyed having him on board and are super grateful for all his help. 

After Matt left us we booked ourselves on a trek into the jungle to a lost city. This city was built around 300AD and is about 600yrs older than Machu Pichu. It took us 4 days to do the trek – hard trekking through the orange jungle mud and the steep hills. We were able to swim in lots of waterfalls and have some close encounters with ginormous spiders and scorpions. One of the real highlights was being able to see an indigenous village where people still live exactly the same as the way the people from the lost city would have lived. Amazing to see people still living like they are in the stone age. 

It took us some time to recover and both of us have blue/purple toe nails which we are not sure we will keep. We decided to try and make a go of it over to Cartegena on Thursday (a few days ago) but the weather was wild so we turned back. Currently waiting on our next weather window and then onwards to the city!!