Saturday evening, November 8,2025
During our last meal at the hacienda, we listened to 2 excellent guitarists and I wanted to include them and their music.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
We have left the coffee region and transited through Bogota en route to Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast. The process took 10 hours. It was dark by the time we passed through Santa Marta and arrived at the village of Don Diego, where we were supposed to catch a short boat ride to the ecolodge Tewimake, but instead we road in a 4×4 UTV over a narrow dirt track for 10 minutes and arrived at Tewimake wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. Without going to our bungalow, we went directly to dinner in an outdoor dining area. I had a delicious beef stir fry dish that came 15 minutes ahead of Mark’s meal, which was accompanied by a bottle of wine, from which the server had been unable to completely remove the cork and tried to serve us with bits of cork in the glass. Apparently the manager heard about the situation and came running with another bottle of wine and took charge of properly opening and serving us. We laughed a bit about the situation, finished our meal and walked up a rocky hillside to check out our room. It was a nice space, and we were soon in bed.
Monday, November 10, 2025
We woke up to find ourselves in an elevated room surrounded by a dense palm forest. Immediately out one side was a large dipping pool.
Out another side was an outdoor shower and an empty hot tub. We dressed and went to breakfast at the bottom of the rocky path. We could see the Don Diego River from the dining room along with very noisy Macaws scavenging from the empty tables.
At 9am, our guide, Emilio, met us in the dining room and escorted us to the river, stopping at ancient indiginous sites along the way. We had signed up to take a kayak down stream, but very shortly after getting into the kayak, we were sorry we were not in inner tubes like other people we saw. Emilio was very accommodating and before long we switched from our kayak to inner tubes.
Much more pleasant experience in delightfully cool water that combats the heat and humidity of the air.
The tubing ended when we reached the Caribbean Ocean and got out on the beach.
Emilio surprised us by escorting us to a shady gazebo with a prepared lunch waiting for us. This lunch was a charming surprise and just the right amount of food, including coconuts with straws to drink the contents. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves when a woman on the beach walked over and interrupted us to ask if we were a king and queen and we should be thrilled to have such a wonderful experience. We assured her we were happy for the experience. She started telling us her story and somehow we managed to communicate that we would appreciate her departure. Her comments did remind us to be grateful for our many blessings.
With lunch behind us, Emilio signaled time to go so we got into a boat and motored back up river to Tewimake ecolodge and our bungalow, named Tima.
We spent the afternoon chilling in our Air Conditioned space and looking into the forest. In the evening we were entertained by intense lightening and thunder and then rain that lasted until about 8pm. We beat the rain both coming and going to dinner. The same thing happened the night we arrived and we were told it is a daily occurrence.
November 11, 2025
The Tayrona Region we were in is approximately a 4.5 hour drive NE of Cartagena nestled between sandy Caribbean beaches and the foothills of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, with lush tropical jungles lining pristine beaches and 7 rivers that descend from the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada. The region’s name comes from the ancient Tayrona tribe who inhabited the region for more than a thousand years before colonialization in the 17th century and continue to live on through four indigenous tribes, including the Kogis, who have preserved the culture, language, traditions and beliefs over centuries.
This was the day we were scheduled to visit the Kogi people in their local village, called Tumguieka. It is home to about 890 people who wear all white cotton clothing. The men wear two woven bags with straps, one for things and the second is filled with coca leaves that have been dried. As a form of greeting, the men don’t shake hands but drop a handful of coca leaves into the other gentleman’s bag. The women just wear a necklace. The men also carry a poporo, a cup-like gourd into which they put seashells that have been cooked until they turn to powder. They use a stick to stir the contents in the gourd. They chew coca leaves and mix the leaves with the crushed seashells in their mouth. Because he is chewing calcium, his people believe their teeth stay strong. I don’t know about that. I just know his mouth looked awful. Anyway, the women do not chew coca leaves. Supposedly, the reason the men rub the stick on the side of the gourd is to transmit their thoughts, a form of meditation they call “Mumbar”. The people consider themselves the “older brothers” as they have been around for many more generations than we have. We are the “younger brothers”.
They live in mud houses similar to the Batwa people in Uganda. A few houses are built with woven palm leaves rather than mud.
These houses are used for special meetings of the men only. Most of the people are farmers. The few men in the village were either coca chewing thinkers or spiritual leaders having a meeting. Men marry at 15 or 16 to girls who are younger. They are monogamous relationships.
I managed a few photos of women and children. The guide told us there were older people who were 115 years old who live up in the mountains. We were surprised by that remark, until we learned they use a different Calendar. For them the moon is the cycle of time. There are 24 moon cycles for our 12 cycles.
It was an interesting meeting. Hard to imagine the different worlds we live in. Then we drove back to the river along the Caribbean coast and boated up river to our lodge. We had a quick lunch and were in our pool as soon as possible. After cooling off, we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon listening to the premature rain outside. I wondered how that experience would be if we were living in a mud house. I am grateful we are “younger brothers”.
Tomorrow morning we are up and away by 8am, as we are driving 4-5 hours to Cartegena, our last stop before returning home.
Adventures with Julia 