The first few days hiking gave us good exercise, sweating from sun as well overcoming the height differences in this terrain.
For our last day, together with Teresa and Lukas, we planned to find a way to hike back towards Santa Marta, but on smaller trails, not used by 4x4s or motorcycles. With info from different sources, we heard about a path down another valley, north of the mountain range we were at. Sounded good, we agreed on an early start to avoid the day's heat when first hiking 550m up to the pass over the mountain range. Teresa and Lukas are 20 years younger, we allowed ourselves an hour head start.
For the first hour, the path was steep but in reasonable condition for walking, with sights of Santa Marta for a "take a picture"-rest stop.
The first pit stop was at Finca Candelaria, a working coffee and cacao farm. That is their main business, but they also host overnight guests. We were invited to sit on the terrace and enjoy their free(!) coffee. We did buy a pound of that great tasting, very strong, not bitter coffee. Tuki, the house-pet toucan joined in.
 |
| Cacao |
|
 |
| Finca Candelaria |
|
 |
| Tuki |
|
 |
| free coffee & Tuki |
|
We rested for an hour, Teresa and Lukas caught up with us. While they had their coffee, we hiked the rest of the uphill section. So far so good. We had read that one has to find a donkey trail turning off from the main trail. Well, we didn't find it initially and ended up at a Finca, where the friendly owner tried to describe to head back a mile and then turn on the donkey path. This time we found it, and also T&L caught up with us. From there it was 1000m downhill, steep at times, muddy at times, with the trail disappearing on us in the vegetation. We passed another Finca, and when our path went steep uphill again, we went back to the Finca, and were promptly directed to another path thru the field, downhill.
 |
| indigenous village |
|
 |
| the path we didn't find at first |
|
|
 |
This is when we lost sight of Teresa and Lukas. Our muscles and feet were aching, blisters had started, and now we were getting wet too from an afternoon thunderstorm. At least we got to the bottom of the steep incline and followed a creek. Still, this wasn't fun anymore. We knew about a Finca with hostel on the rest of the way and decided to call it a day there.
 |
| Finca Carpe Diem |
The bad news: We had reached our limit. The good news, we know about our limit and can plan accordingly!
