Day 246 - Tuesday 23rd May 2006

I woke up about 8am and we were still moving. Apparently we had suffered no more hold ups and we were progressing nicely. The bad news was that we had been held up for about 3 hours, which meant that instead of 22 hours it would take 25 hours. But what is 3 hours between friends!

When I woke up I decided I needed a change from Atlas Shrugged, so read Of Mice and Men. All I can say is I think the Valium hadn’t worn off because I cant remember a thing about that book!

From 8am when I woke up, until about 5pm, we sat on that bus looking out of the window and reading. We were late and it began to feel like we were never going to arrive. By this time we had been on the bus for 26 hours. Eventually we reached Barranquilla (birthplace of Shakira) where we changed buses to head to Santa Marta. Getting to Santa Marta took another 2 hours. By the time we reached a hostel we had been travelling form 3pm Monday to 7pm Tuesday. 28 hours.

So naturally you would assume we would just head straight to bed. Wrong. We got into the hostel and everyone was preparing to have a party. Not people to miss out on a good old-fashioned knees up, we bought some beers from the hostel bar and commenced the evenings activities.

After a few rounds of the local firewater, a beer named Brahva, which at 6.5% is a pretty good way to blow your head off, we made for a local nightspot, guided by the girl who worked in the reception. We arrived at a bar that reminded me of a cross between the old Birdbrook Tavern and Vita in Sudbury and all settled down with some more of the local brew. The bar happened to be empty apart from the eight or so of us, and about 15 prostitutes with pimps in tow. Trying to convince us to part with some of our hard earned for a sample of their services, they quickly flocked around. I tried my hardest to convince Aaron to pay the quoted price of 30,000 Pesos (£1 = 4,500 Pesos) for a night with the best looking one, but he totally refused.

On these occasions there is always one lads the girls pick on, and this time it was a poor American lad who got the full attention of the big black mama who was giving him the hard sell, grinding away in front of him, pulling him out of his seat and making him gyrate with her in the middle of an empty dance floor. We all had a great laugh at this lad who just couldn’t get rid of her no matter how hard he tried.

By about 4am it was time to call it a night and we all made our way back to the hostel, where some sleep was needed if we were going to make it up by 8am to go to camping on the beach for a few days.