Palomino we love you

After having been to Playa Blanca we had serious doubts we’d find a beach that would struck us as much as that one did. Well, that was because we hadn’t been to Palomino. It’s a different kind of beach though. The sea here comes with much more waives and strong currents. It’s not the swimming pool Playa Blanca was, but it’s uniquely amazing in its own way. It’s also a long long beach, this time with plenty of palms raising along the side, and here there are no cabins right next to the water, but rather further from it. It’s incredibly beautiful.

And it’s not just the views. In Palomino, during June, it’s mango time! If coming back from the Sierra de Santa Marta we picked many mangoes, here we hit the jackpot!! I’d go every morning hunting for mangoes and coming back with 20 or 30 to boost our senses through the day. They are just there, laying on the floor, ready to eat, and you just have to pick them up! And as it’s low season, there’s almost no people so the competition is small, and there’s plenty for all the ones interested. You don’t have to fight for your mangoes, which I think I would, cause they are just too good! So I’d wake up around 6:30 or 7 am, grab a plastic bag and start my mango route. I can’t possibly think of a better way to start the day.

And the next morning, you go again to the same places and there are more waiting for you!! I couldn’t stop myself. At some point, even after eating mangos all day, i still finished with quite some, so decided to sleep right next to them. Kasia said I‘d replace her with a mango if I could. Waiting on scientists to make that happen 🙂

Before coming, we checked the weather forecast and it was showing thunder storms every single day. Well for the first 4 days we didn’t see a drop, and then during three days it’d rain during the evening, but we’d still have a terrific weather all mornings. And this is called winter around here.

A sweet deal Palomino hides is the river mouth of palomino river, which melts with the Caribbean in what all tourists agree to consider as an amazing landscape.

Even though the water level here is pretty low, caution is needed due to the strong currents, which are higher in the river mouth. While we were in there, a student from the University of Medellin lost his life in this place. Unfortunately, as we were told, tragic stories like this one happen every year, as people don’t pay enough attention.

There’s an attraction called tubing that one can do in Palomino, and we highly recommend! For 10k during low season, you get a huge inflatable tire, which you carry on your shoulder and get up in a bike that takes you up the road following the river. What they don’t mention is that after the bike trip, which was the first bike trip ever for Kasia, you still have to walk quite a lot to get to the starting point. While walking up, we found a family going up too. At one point, an old woman was waling in front of me and I could see she was hating every bit of it. Besides, the damn huge tire wasn’t the lightest thing ever. Before witnessing the old lady die before my eyes, I took her tire and carried it up. Even without the inflatable thing, I still thought she’d faint at any moment, and felt quite relieved when we made it to the end of the path. From there basically you just sit and let the river take you down to the beach, enjoying the amazing views. We didn’t bring the camera here, thinking it’d get wet. It was a mistake, we could easily have avoided messing up the camera there.

In Palomino one can see a great number of pelicans. These creatures are fantastic, and pretty damn big. One can see them flying low searching for the fish, and then raising up a bit to plummet into the water, dive to catch the fish and pop back up. This same scene could be witnessed plenty of times, but one doesn’t get tired of seeing it, specially when 2 pelicans do it almost at the same time, as in an almost perfect synchronized move.

As we were enjoying unlimited mangoes, we thought we’d try something bigger. At the beach we would always go to the same spot, as it was one of the few where you get a ”free shadow”, meaning the palms here were not logged so that people would have to pay to the hostels to enjoy some shade.

So one day, while chilling at the beach, I felt like climbing a palm. It wasn’t as hard as i thought it would, and it sure was a lot of fun. So we got free cocos too! I must say i’m not a big fan of them, but the water tasted good, and Kasia really liked it. The meat though was really awful, basically like chewing a piece of cardboard.

Palomino was a great choice, we were going to spend there 2 days and finally we stayed for 8, and it could have been even more, cause here, opposite to Playa Blanca, there’s electricity and running water. Also, the camping where we stayed at, el Ocelote, was really nice. And it had a very particular pet, a goat called Coco, who even liked to be petted.

In the morning, if the sky was clear you could see the pikes from Santa Marta, with the permanent snow. We met really nice people and had a terrific time. Most certainly a place we’d go back to!