Day 5 – The Trek Out

 Today was the most challenging day yet. However, this is where the trip starts to get a little more interesting.

We started the morning at, you guessed it, 5:00 a.m.  There were a couple of fruit stops along the way but not for very long. We hiked almost continuously until we got to El Mamey. Nathan and I arrived about 20 minutes before the rest of the group. Xander was only 10 minutes behind us. I estimate that this was around 12 mi to El Mamey. We had lunch and then jumped into our waiting 4x4s for a trip back towards Santa Marta. The driver seemed like he was in a race. We were bouncing and sliding all over the facing bench seats for almost an hour.

Thank goodness we were to be dropped off at Calabazo before  getting to Santa Marta for another 3-hour hike to our hotel. When we arrived at Calabazo we decided to swap out clean clothes for the smelly ones in our day packs and leave our full packs behind. To cut our hike down, we also decided to get motorcycle rides from the entrance to the half way point in the park.

Once on the backs of the motorcycles we were moving around 10 mph, probably 5 times faster than if we hiked. On this 30 minute ride we passed a few weary looking hikers and we’re glad we weren’t them as we were equally weary.

And then we started the hike. We hiked for around an hour and a half and emerged onto the beach. We looked around. Saw a few people on either side of us. We started to walk to the west expecting to see the hotel but instead we just saw that all the people on the beach were naked. We were on the nude beach . We asked someone where the hotel might be and she said that we would have to hike back into the jungle for another 3 hours. We had missed a turn. Reactively we turned around and started hiking back in,cup hill, for about 15 minutes until we decided the best course of action might be to go back to the beach and look for a different hotel. I knew that there was lodging along the beach from my research and had originally wanted to stay in an area where there were lots of people staying in tents, but I was couldn’t reserve a tent. We hiked in the jungle along the beach and emerged back onto the beach close to 6:00 p.m. it was starting to get dark. We managed to find the information desk before they closed and rented a large tent with beds for the night. There were showers, toilets and food commissary in this area and many people.

We ate and the crammed into the tent with our sweaty smelly clothes. You cannot imagine how bad we smelled. 

Sleeping was a little difficult as it was hot and humid and there was a loud party further down the beach raging into the night. We would hear a big breeze outside our tent. Our “tent windows” were open but the breeze never reached us.

As I finally drifted to sleep reflecting on the numbers 22 and 43,000. The miles and steps we hiked today. Certainly a record for me.