The wild wild east

Leaving from Palomino I headed for Rioacha, the last "big" town before the desert. My plan was to get there in the afternoon in order to look at the options to get to Cabo de la Vela. The lonely planet was advising going on a tour but it did look super expensive. Anyway the first thing was to find somewhere to sleep, but has it appeared Rioacha is a really touristic town and it was the middle of the Colombian holiday. Therefore I struggled a bit to find a budget accommodation. Finally I found a private room for something like 10 pounds which was the most expensive night I had paid so far.

Rioacha Sea Front

Speaking with the guy who rented me the room, the best option to go to Cabo was to take a car to the small town of Uribia and then from there take a 4x4 to Cabo. The other advice I got from him was to take a lot of water and some food as they have massive shortage at the end of the peninsula. So I spent the rest of my day shopping for supplies and walking on the waterfront.
The next morning I headed fairly early to find a car to Uribia. As always it turned out that it was really easy to find a transport. Walking in the middle of what could look like a bit of a chaotic street you hear "Uribia Uribia aqui amigo" and there is a few chairs in the shade to wait for the car to fill. I took the car with a couple of English folks Alex and Felicity who both had some south american origin and who were therefore speaking a really good Spanish. Arriving in Uribia again we found really quickly a 4x4 to go to Cabo.

Uribia City Centre in the morning

 We took advantage of the stop to get a bite to eat and buy a few more supplies. The town of Uribia was quite mental. It is the last city before the desert and if is located close to the Venezuelan border therefore it is the place where everybody is going to get cheap supplies. The town looks like a massive market selling all kind of random things ranging from mountains of medicine to rice and plastic bottles of petrol. In the middle of that there are hundreds of rickshaws racing through the street as if this was the best business idea ever. We got into the 4x4 and started to wait for the car to fill.

4x4 to Cabo

As the wait was long we decided to drink a few beers with Alex Felicity and Jack another English guy. After an hour and a half we were still sitting at the back of the pick up in the same place in the middle of the main street and starting to feel quite tipsy. Finally after two hours we left Uribia with our load of water, rice sugar and gas cylinder. The ride on the dirt track was fun and bumpy and took us through many super small villages in the middle of the cactus where we were stopping to unload or load different goods.

On the road to Cabo

The arrival in Cabo was pretty spectacular, and I got really excited when I saw a few kite surfs riding on the turquoise blue lagoon. In the afternoon I decided to rent a kite for an hour (more would ha e been too expensive) and go for a spin. It was super enjoyable.

Me kiting in Cabo

At night we had a very interesting discussion with Andres the owner of the kite shop who had previously been working for the government gathering information to fight the guerilla and the armed groups. He described a striking picture of what Colombia has been only a few years ago and what he thought would be the evolution. Along his story he was adding many anecdotes that could have been just out of a James Bond movie.
The next morning I woke up at 5 a.m. to go for a walk around the peninsula before getting baked by the sun. I was with Clement a French guy that I met the previous day.

Walking at sunrise in the desert was absolutely fantastic. We headed to a group of hills from which wee could see on one side the rugged coast line and on the other side the lunar desert.

The geologic formation were really interesting and impressive. In some places the sea water was coming out of holes in the rocks like a geiser every time a wave was crashing. After 4 hours hiking we stopped for a few beers at Pilon de Azucar, one of the mountains.

View from Pilon de Azucar

In the evening we got the chance to observe the locals guys kitesurfing at sunset. They were absolutely astonishing. The interesting thing was that they were all Wayuu people, the indigenous people of the Guajira. These guys did not had anything in this place at the end of the world but because of the development of kitesurfing they all got into it and are now kite teacher at 10 years old. So we sat and watched them as there was no point even trying to compete.

I decided to leave the next morning at 5 a.m. to get back to Palomino to collect some of my belongings that I had left.The ride back to Uribia was pretty epic as I was for half of the journey standing out of the 4x4 and the other half seating on the roof. The plan was then to head to Tayrona national park.