The Caribbean coast, sun, sea, sand, palm trees, coconuts, lizards, rum, SANDFLIES and lots of Australians! That could pretty much describe the whole of my time in the North of Colombia! I arrived in Santa Marta with two Aussie girls, Ambar and Megan from my hostel in Cartagena. We had a short deliberation over whether to stay at La Brisa Loca, the party hostel in Santa Marta, or The Dreamer, a more chilled out hostel in between Santa Marta and Taganga, and decided on The Dreamer because three Aussie guys, James, Leo and Rohan, that the girls had met in Cartagena, were staying there. Turns out it was a good choice as Santa Marta's a bit of a s***hole and the beach is gross, and the pool at The Dreamer is much nicer and they basically let us use the hostel as a base to leave our big bags while we went on trips to other places, and the boys were hilarious so we had a great group to hang around with for about 10 days!

We were supremely gutted when we arrived on Sunday morning to find out that we'd missed the full moon party that happened on Saturday night at a beach up the coast, but we had fun times anyway! We spent a day with the boys at Bahia Concha, a beach in Tayrona national park, which was nice, but nothing special as there was quite a lot of people there, and a lot of sun shelters, but me and Ambar had fun swimming to a big rock that looked like pride rock, and I had immense difficulty climbing (it was a lot harder than it looked from the shore!), until we were shouted at by the police and had to get down!

Me, Ambar, Megan and James headed up to Minca for a couple of days and a night, which was really nice, and a break from the stifling heat of Santa Marta! We all walked up to a couple of waterfalls close by, and had a dip in the pools and a waterfall shower, which was a bit like standing in a hailstorm! Minca is up in the hills, so we drank a few beers and watched the sun go down from our hostel, where we could see the whole of Santa Marta and Taganga down below, and a family of toucans flying around in the trees, as well as a few bats! We also had our first experience of sleeping in hammocks with mosquito nets over them, which was ok, though certainly not the best night's sleep I've ever had!

The following day we caught mototaxi's through the clouds up to the top of the hills, after a stand-off between us and the mototaxi guys, who were trying to charge us 14,000,when we'd been told at the hostel it was 12,000, and a 4x4 was 10,000. However after 20 minutes of dirty looks being passed between them and us, and no 4x4's appearing, they agreed to 12,000 and we were on our way! We had considered mountain biking back down to Minca, but see how crap the dirt road we went up was made us change our minds, and it turned out there were only two bikes anyway and four of us! The mototaxi ride was certainly an experience, as it took half an hour and went pretty near to the cliff edge at some points, and through some massive holes and puddles! From the hostel at the top you're supposed to be able to see the snowcapped mountains of the Sierra Nevada range, but as we got there around midday, we were above the clouds and couldn't really see too much! None of us wanting to stay the night up there to see the view when it was clearer at dusk or dawn, we headed back down on foot, planning on stopping at a coffee plantation and a natural pool on the way. However, we went a slightly different path which we were told was easier, but turned out not to pass either of those, but the same waterfalls we'd been to the day before! So we ended up having a knee breaking downhill walk back to Minca, which we passed the three hours of talking about pregnancy and various other subjects which James LOVED! Sorry James!

Back to Santa Marta, we moved hostels to a place in Taganga, the Masia Summer, which has an awesome swimming pool, great for hanging around in when hungover, and our friends Rohan and Leo AND Kelly and Charlie! Bonus! Taganga doesn't have a very nice beach either, but it does have a lot of hostels, therefore a lot of travellers, quite a few of whom I knew! It also has a lot of shops selling jewellery and clothes, a bikini shop where you choose the fabric pattern you want and she custom makes them to the style, shape and size you want (obviously I bought a bikini here!), and a lot of great restaurants including one of the best restaurants of all time, Babaganoush, which was so great I'm going to dedicate it its own paragraph.

BABAGANOUSH! Amazing restaurant, great service (they actually bring everyone's food at the same time which is unheard of in South America), phenomenal food and the owner/head chef is REALLY friendly. It's so great we've actually been there three times! For 23,500 pesos, just over £8, you get a starter to share of really good NON sweet bread and homemade hummus or garlic butter, and an entrée, main and dessert, with a choice of five entrees, five mains and three desserts. I can't remember exactly what each choice was, but the pumpkin soup or the falafel for entrée were amazing, the white chocolate mousse and the brownie were the best desserts (the brownie was definitely the second best brownie I've had in my life!) and the filet mignon with blue cheese sauce was one of the best things I've tasted, ever, and that's a lot to say from a person who'd never eaten steak before this trip! The frozen strawberry daiquiris were pretty sweet too… Honestly Babaganoush, I think I would travel back to Colombia solely to eat your food again, and I challenge anyone to contradict me!

Taganga also has a great bar/club, the Mirador, which is on the hill out of town, overlooking Taganga, and where ALL the backpackers and a lot of the locals went, so we had a really fun Friday and Saturday night partying there before the group of eight of us, ridiculously hungover on Sunday morning, left for Costeño beach surf camp!