Sometimes we need a break from being tourist in big cities and we planned 5 days in the small town of Minca, which is quite the contrast from our stays in Bogota, Cartagena and Medellin. Minca is a small hippy town in the jungle hills above Santa Marta. There are many hostels filled with European counter-culture types that spend their days hiking in the hills to waterfall and their nights partying it up with mind altering substances. We are not the hostel type and stayed instead in a small hut airbnb that was lacking heat, AC, glass windows (screens only), and hot water. We did have electricity and Wifi most of the time, but those luxuries were at the whim of the weather and whatever pitfalls happen in small mountain towns. Our place was a bit out of town so we needed to follow some dirt roads and cross a foot bridge whenever we came into town for restaurants and groceries. We loved the peaceful nature of the town and just being able to relax and not worry about the street crime of the big cities.
Near our footbridge was a restaurant along the river which made fantastic Colombian lunches for less than $5 and sold fruit juice smoothies for less than $2. People would hang out here all afternoon and cool off in the river with some cheap beer provided by the restaurant. We enjoyed our time here for a couple of days until we realized that we weren’t getting bitten by mosquitos but instead by the small gnat-like sand flies. The itchy bites covered our lower legs and gave us what the locals call “Minca Legs”. I wish we would have researched this before spending so much time next to the river. M somehow reacted a little worse to the bites than I did.
We did enjoy hiking through the hills and seeing the waterfalls and the long scenic views back towards the big city of Santa Marta and the beach. It is nice to have a break from seeing the must-see sites of cities and instead just walking along trails and enjoying nature.
We didn’t see any monkeys or sloths in Minca but we did see a lot of birds. We spent a lot of time on our porch in the mornings and evenings just watching the noisy song birds including a lot of them I had never seen before. One day, I took a morning hike with a bird guide and we saw 58 different species and at 22 of them were new ones for me. My bird life list went from 503 to 540 this week.
This was a great relaxing stay and we could have stayed a few more days and enjoyed doing nothing a bit longer. But our itchy legs were probably telling us it was time to go. Next stop – Medellin, Colombia.