Day 255 – Thursday 1st June 2006

Check out was 11am. Come 10.45 we rolled out of bed and quickly tried to pack our things up and leave. I decided that I wanted to go to Cartagena and hang around there for the 10 days until my flight to Panama, so it would be goodbye to the Swedes until much later in the year when we had planned to meet up in England to take in some lash action.

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Day 254 – Wednesday 31st May 2006

Waking up again a little fragile, it was straight into the sea to clear the head. The cooling water worked its magic yet again, and that together with the fruit juices made me feel almost human again.

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Day 253 - Tuesday 30th May 2006

It is amazing how a little dip in the sea can clear your head after a night on the rum! For that reason the sea was my first port of call after rolling out of bed mid morning. Then it was fruit smoothie time and more reading and generally doing nothing. The Swedes and I were in surprisingly good form after a few too many the night before, but that was mainly due to our location and the fact that we had absolutely nothing to do for the whole day except sit on the beach and throw the little kids who kept pestering us into the sea.

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Day 252 - Monday 29th May 2006

Aaron and Jon had to get to Bogota for their flight to Rio via Santiago before heading back to England, and they wanted to see a few places in Colombia along the way, so in order to have sufficient time to make it worth stopping and seeing they had to be off. So mid morning the six of us separated for the last time on this trip. We had travelled together off and on since Salta, Argentina in late March, and here we were in the north of Colombia in late May, a huge distance over two months and some great experiences.

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Day 251 - Sunday 28th May 2006

Not a day of much action, it was mainly sitting around & reading, interspersed with a dash of swimming and football on the beach. I went out for the obligatory fruit smoothie breakfast and of course the fish lunch, just to break up the hardship of sitting on the beach and relaxing.

I wasn’t planning on going to the cinema but come the time the boys were about to set off I was hankering for a bit of air conditioning, so I went along to the mall in Santa Marta. We watched Clive Owen and Denzel Washington in Inside Man, one of the best films I have seen for a long time. For me about ten times cooler than Oceans Eleven, it is the story of a bank robbery in New York. If you haven’t already seen it, hire it today!

Day 250 - Saturday 27th May 2006

Waking up with enforced freshness (due to no alcohol sales) I made my way to the beach. That took me all of ten seconds as I walked out of my hotel, down 5 steps and there I was. Then it was straight into the water to cool off.

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Days 247 to 249 - Wednesday 24th to Friday 26th May 2006

In reality after getting to bed at 5am, an 8am start was never going to happen. I thought we all did well to get up at 9am and start preparations for our trip to Parque Nacional Tayrona, the pristine Caribbean beach where we would be kicking back and relaxing for the next few days whilst the elections were going on.

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