Minca

After a quick stop in Santa Marta where I went to the market to get my bag fixed, I headed to the Minca, a small village only 40min away from Santa Marta by car. As always, waiting for the car to fill took about an hour, but who cares, it is the Caribean and you've got to learn to chill.

Santa Marta Market

Fixing bag in the market

Minca has been one of the places that I have most appreciated so far. The setting was perfect for me: mountains, jungle, amazing rivers and a breathtaking view over the Carribean. 

The hostel's terrace

The pool

During my time in Minca I have made two interesting meeting.
First I met a couple from Bogota in their late twenties. Both spoke really good English and even a bit of French for the girl. The interesting thing was that they were well into the indigenous culture. For them it was about the Muiscas who are the indigenous of the centre of Colombia. We spent most of the night speaking about their cultures and rituals. The guy was at this point using what they call a Poporo, a hollowed gourd that contains crushed shells. With a stick they transfer the dust of crushed shells from the gourd to coca leaves that they are chewing in their mouths. The excess powder is then placed on the neck of Poporo.

Men using Poporos

This practice is a sort of meditation. It helps the men to connect with nature and his environment, including the people they meet or the situation they are in. They put all their thoughts into this instrument sculpting it to match their personality and trail in life. This ritual is only achieved by men who receive this instrument when they become adults. They explained to me that the girl has this relation with nature and environment naturally and that at the beginning this "tool" has been invented to help men to develop their feminine part. The Poporo also has tons of sexual symbolic with the shape of the gourd representing the feminin and the masculin and the stick going inside...
It was really interesting to get an insight into this culture as it is usually complicated to start a real dialogue with the indigenous being a tourist with a bad Spanish.

The second meeting was with a group of French guys that were starting an hostel up in the mountain. I got their contact through a French guy that I had met in the desert. These guys, 2 girls and 3 guys, all in their twenties had decided to stop their jobs in Europe to come and develop their own place. The place that they had just bought was absolutely amazing, overlooking the Jungle.

View from the terrace

The house

It was really inspiring to see the energy of this group of young folks who had decided to change their way of life from day to day office work to developing a cool project in a paradise.
During my time at their place I have had the chance to eat homemade croissants with a coffee in the morning, witness flights of perruches, toucans and eagles over the terrace and pay a visit to the coffee farm in which they have openned a cafeteria that you shouldn't miss if you are going this way.

The coffee farm