#but if you take away some people's foreign vists...what are we left with

[thewalesot5]

You can tell who went on foreign trips/tours this year.

[xiomararamirez1128-blog]

My magic trip to guajira

My last vacation was really magical, my boyfriend and I visited the Guajira and I was amazed by guajira. We thought there weren’t places to visit in our country, because we thought there were a lot of dangers and poverty in departments like guajira, but we actually don´t know the true magic of these regions.I traveled to Guajira the first days of June, I went to Riohacha, Maicao, Uribia, Manaure, Cabo de la Vela, Punta gallinas and Dunas de taroa the last four towns correspond to the famous Alta guajira.

The transport and food in Alta Guajira is a bit complicated because there aren´t buses in the desert, only trucks and the transport is limited. If you don't book transportation you don't get it easily and, in the restaurants, they don't sell you food if you don't book it before. We pay an agency for transport, food and chinchorros.

I thought that Guajira would be the same like some years ago when I first visited it as a child, hostels didn´t have bathrooms, there were no bedrooms, no dishes and no energy but I was wrong, this region has advanced a little because now there are beautiful and modern hostels with bathrooms, bedrooms, dishes and energy for some hours.

Our trip began in Riohacha where we made a contract with an agency for  the Alta Guajira Tour. The agency picked us in the hostel we were staying in Riohacha, the car was just as we imagined it would be, a giant 4x4 SUV that’s the kind of car that can take you throught the magnificient desert, we took the road heading north of Riohacha, our driver and guide was a really nice guy his name was Miguel and he had a million stories to tell us about his extense experience in driving for tours through all Guajira, our first stop was Uribia, the well known indigenous capital of Colombia the first characteristic you can list from Uribia is CHAOTIC, all the streets were full of people and the cars and motorcycles drive against the normal way, but you can quickly find this messy town very charming, you can see lot of autentic indigenous people selling their beautiful handcrafted jewerly and clothes and bags, I was surprised by the quantity of foreign people walking around the town, Europeans, Asians, locals, all of them trying to find the way to communicate and negotiate transportation, clothes and food since not many local people know English language, It was funny to observe that cultural mix in the streets. 

We stayed in Uribia a couple of hours we bought some snacks and water for the next days and then we left behind us Uribia and headed north looking forward to arrive to the next stop of the trip El cabo de la vela,a few kilometers later we started to see some “rancherias” the tipical indigenous houses, we started to see come cactus and as much as we go norther there were less urban civilization and more desert, it took us about 3 hous to arrive to Cabo de la vela, the hostel was really nice and clean and it was located only 40 meters away from the beach, the beach was clean and beautiful the geographical position of Cabo de la Vela makes this place one of the best places for practicing kitesurfing, there were 4 kitesurfing schools around the hostel, El cabo de la vela is a windy place during all the day, this makes it perfect, because despite the heat of the sun, you feel mostly fresh. we took the lunch in the hostel and then we drive to the famous “pilon de azucar”, the sand of this beach was different to all the beaches I have ever been the water was really salty in this beach but it was nice to swim here.

After visting Pilon de Azucar, we visited the Rainbow beach, in this beach there were some cliffs, full of crabs caves, we werent allow to swim in this beach because the waves were really giant, when the waves hit the cliffs they created rainbows.

As the day passed the sunset time was close, so we drive to the Cabo de la Vela’s lighthouse, we needed to climb a hill to arrive to the top of the lighthouse, from the lighthouse there was an amazing view of part of the desert, you can see also all cabo de la vela town and the giant ocean, the colours of the sky were beautiful and the colours changed as the sun was hiding, it is true what they say, the Guajira has the best sunsets in Colombia

We arrived to the hostel at 7pm, while we were taking the dinner we met a couple from the Netherlands, they were having problems with communication because they didn´t speak Spanish. So we help them to translate when they needed to negotiate the transportation, we became friends with them and spend the night together drinking some beers ans talking about our experiences

In the hostel and during the trip we learn some words of “Wayunaiki” the lenguage of the local indigenous and we learn that the wayunaiki language doesn´t have gramatical.

We slept that night in the “Chinchorros” a kind of large hammock sewed by the indigenous people, it was very comfortable to spend the night in this hammocks 

The next day we visited “Dunas de Taroa” The Taroa Dunes were very beautiful and very different to all kind of sand I have ever seen before, we did sandboarding

We also saw a wind farm, it was fascinating seeing this wind farm because in the semester prior to this trip I saw a signature called electrical engineering, and our teacher show us how these windmills work

Then we went to “Puntagallinas” puntagallinas is the northest point of southamerica continent, this was the last place we visited in the Alta Guajira.