The boat from El Valle passes more smoothly on the way back, this time loaded down with more gringos than locals.  Most in the boat are headed for Nuqui, but words of wisdom from our jGerman friends have us heading to the small pueblo of jurubida, where we first picked up our friends Josh and Julia on the way to El Valle.

 

This time the boat pulls around into the sheltered river and climbing out into the ankle deep water.  As the boat pulls away a youn man named David introduces himself and offers to help us find accommodation.  We tell him that were looking for Jessica’s place but he does not know it.  We shout out to Josh and Julia on the boat and ask what the owners real name is.

 

“Jobeida”  they shout back as the speed away and David nods happily bringing us into the streets made of sand that criss cross through the small town of a thousand or two.  Music blares through the entire town as people sit on ancient plastic chairs, chatting and some dancing, Cassie and I are greeted with smiles and waves.

 

 

David hands us off to a grinning women who turns out to be Jobeida and she shows us into her two story home. I tell her we need a room with two beds and she leads us up into a spacious room with two thin but adequate beds and mosquito nets to match.  She tells us the price is 25,000 but after mentioning we are friends with Josh and Julia she graciously drops it to 20,000 COP.  Lunch and Dinner are 10,000 COP each and delicious.

 

We leave our bags behind and are quickly out the door to the hottest sun I’ve felt sine leaving the Caribbean coast.  Cassie only has one more night before her flight and we’ve heard the Termales (hot springs) are very much worth a visit.  Jobeida happily walks us through town to find us a guide.  Before too long we’ve met up with Happy as he calls himself and quickly we’re sat into along and narrow wooden canoe to cross the river/ocean.

 

After getting only a little soaked in the canoe ride we climb out onto a narrow crescent of lighter than normal sand and, Happy having anchored his Canoe, we start off on a short walk along the coast, half on the beach, half in the ocean, before cutting up a fairly well defined path back into the jungle.

 

 

We criss cross a small stream several time that grows bigger with each step deeper into the jungle.  As we walk Happy happily points out different plants and their functions.  He’s very committed to being a good guide and I-m left grasping at the few words of horticulture I know in Spanish and trying to translate for Cassie as we walk.  He also tells us that the very next day people will be installing signs explaining some of the plant life and more things.  Cassie and I decide we’re glad were here today and not tomorrow.  Just another sign of tourism beginning to sprout in the soon to be fertile soils of Choco.

 

Maybe 35 minutes after leaving our room we reach the first  spring, natural warm waters rising out of the ground, the pool created by a small concrete barrier.  The water is warm but more like a bath than a hot tub.  After a few relaxing minutes we move on to the slightly smaller but much much hotter pool, complete with a cold shower just outside the pool as fresh jungle water pours out of a thick pipe.

 

The water here is perfect and from the I submerge my skin I feel my muscles releasing, knots untying all across my body.  We spend a few minutes in the water unwinding then snap some phots before transitioning from cold to hot more than a few times.  From the pool I lose myself in the canopy above, thin glimmers of the blue sky snaking through the endless green of the jungle.

 

 

Eventually we decide It’s time to head back the way we’ve come  but before long we’ve stopped to cool off in  small swimming hole and natural water slide quickly before heading back to the boat, the tide now receded to the point that almost all of the walk stays dry.  The canoe trip back is smoother too and soon we find ourselves back out front of Jobeida’s home asking for a very late lunch.  She obliges and after half an hour spent reading up on the terrace were called down for a delicious lunch of, you guessed it, Fish, Rice and Palatanos.

 

By the end of lunch I’m definitely feeling a nap coming on, but lucky for me I venture out into town with Cassie, planning just to walk for a few minutes.  As is often the way with travelling, the best experiences are utterly unexpected.

 

I make it to the edge of the beach and am just about to turn back when David calls to us and waves from a makeshift beach volleyball court.  They need a few more players and both I and Cassie are invited to join David’s team.  The rest of the guys are clearly a little unsure about Cassie joining but they warm to it quickly and we play a few games of winner goes on style beach volleyball.  As with most sports the Colombians completely outclass the gringos, though my serve is still somewhat decent.

 

 

After losing a match I wait by the sideline and watch another more serious level game happen as Cassie takes some photos of the game and wanders off down the beach.  The local kids have now noticed us and by the time I go to join Cassie down by the ocean she’s being swarmed by young girls who are absolutely entranced by her pale skin and silky hair.  When I show up and offer to take some pictures of them all it all kicks off and quickly the crowd of children around us grows.

 

My growing but still limited spanish is put to the test as the kids speak in torrents asking us endless questions including where we’re from, why we’re here, what languages we speak, what we think of Colombia, where were staying, what’s our relationship to eachother and well, you get the idea, questions firing off faster than I can answer.  Either way the kids are gregarious and eager to introduce themselves to us and even more eager to take some photos.

 

 

After the girls have quickly braided Cassie’s hair the demands begin, as they ask us to sing, dance and do all manner of tricks.  Cassie eventually breaks into a spirited version of Wannabe by the Spice girls.  Then the kids discovered I could rap, and even though all but one of them spoke no english, everything changed.  They kept telling me to go faster and faster until I was pushing Busta Rhymes break your neck level speed.  The kids grinned and kept asking for more, and anyone who knows me knows how much I like attention.

 

 

We take more photos all together as the sun dissapears from the sky and were left in darkness.  But the party doesn’t stop then and the past sleepiness is well and truly gone from my mind.  Cassie asks me if she should go get something with a name I don’t recognie.  She wants to show the kids and I say of course she should.  The kids are hesitant to let her go but eventually they do after I keep repeating she’s coming straight back.

 

While she’s gone I fill the minutes with more rap the kids now full on dancing to it as still more join the group.  Cassie reappears bearing crazy shifting LED lights on ropes that change colours each second.  At first she thinks she’ll just show the kids some tricks, spinning them around as the change colours in the darkness of night.  But kids learn best by doing, and after a few seconds they’ve convinced her to hand over these magical lights and one by one they take their turns.  It only takes a few reminders to share fairly and before long everyone has spun these wondrous circus esque thngs.  Honestly I´m a little upset they hadn’t come out in El Valle, as they really are pretty magical.  The kids love them immensely and much to our chagrin many of them stay ou,t ignoring the calls from their parents to come home.  Get ready for the pictures……

 

Okay here they are!

 

 

Eventually we have to make excuses and slowly retreat from the beach back to our hostel, though that process takes at least half an hour.  Okay, I can’t help it a few more photos, just a shame you can’t really see their faces, in many ways they shone brighter than the LED lights.

 

Neither of us is hungry enough to ask for dinner but Jobeida still makes us an absolutely lovely mug of hot chocolate, definitly the best I’ve had in Colombia outside of Guatape.  We chat and read for a while then head off for an early night, trying to sleep  through the blasting music that fills the town.  Luckily Ive turned myself into a damn good sleeper over the past year and a half and i sleep like a baby.

 

We wake early with the sun, Cassie so she can catch the lancha back to Nuqui, and me because I figured it would be nice to see her off. As we walk towards the lancha we ask Jobeida if last nights loud and late party had been a wedding or a holiday.  She smiles and informs me, “No, es solo lunes.”  Im unsure whether to believe her or not but the locals in this little Pueblo do seem to live a good and happy life, full of music, dancing and positive energy.

 

Of course after seeing Cassie off I pass out for a few more hours before waking up and taking a nice long walk to the end of the beach, enjoying the quiet solitude and collecting some shells as I walk.

 

 

I make it to the other end of the river and turn back, saying hello to a few of my friends from the night before and then head back to Jobeida’s for a delicious fish dish  this time with a wonderful sauce with some actually spice, a rarity in Colombian cuisine.  Lunch done  I decided to relax for a little while in my room but happened to look out the window just in time to see a man come wandering into town with a two toed sloth on his shoulder.  I head down and find the sloth curled up in some bushes eating and relaxing happily.  A few locals gather and we get to know this exotic “Mascota”.

 

 

After a while everyone leaves the sloth to sleep so I head back out to the beach and got some writing done in front of the rough and rolling pacific.  On the way back at sunset I run into the new tourist arrivals two girls from Germany who live in Cali now.  I don’t know what it is about the germans, but Colombia is full of them and so many of them are here studying for a year or longer.  It’s quite impressive and cool.

 

At any rate as the sun dissapears from the sky I stand at the edge of a beach and watch, then temporarily join a game of soccer before the kids find me again, demanding more and more rap.  Many of them have brought friends who’d not been there the night before hoping to see me rap.  They get their wish. Some of them also have fun playing with my ipod touch and listening to an assortment of North American and European music.  The chili peppers are among the best received after the Authentics of course.

 

 

The kids are mildly annoyed i don’t have any games downloaded but instead delighted in using the selfie cam.  If I can get the files on to the computer I’ll include some of them.

 

From there I headed back to Jobaida’s and was served a mildly dissapointing dinner of eggs and plantains.  It was perfectly good just less good than the fresh fish I’ve grown accustomed to here on the pacific.  After dinner the german girls offer me some watermelon and I happily partake.

 

Soon thereafter I’m pulled out into the street by a parade of some sort full of local kids and adults singing and dancing and leading a small brass and percussion band through town in zig zag patterns.  Kids come to me and share the gatorade type drink in my hand called Squash, seeking a little refreshment from their hard dancing.  i find myself at a street food stall serving up delicious sausages on a stick with potatoes at either end for 1500 Pesos, the perfect after dinner dinner.  The band circles back around and I follow for a short while before heading back to bed knowing that the lancha to Nuqui leaves an hour earlier than it id that morning.

 

I wake up at 5 am to pack my bags and to a steady drizzling rain.    I hear music out in the street and shake my head.  Surely it can’t be.  It is.  The same brass band is still marching through the streets playing music and revelling in the cooling rain.  I can’t be sure, but they look like they’ve been going all night, the crowd of followers only a little smaller than it was around 9 pm the night before.

 

The Lancha ends up running very much on Choco time but i’ve got plenty of time before my midafternoon flight in Nuqui.  It’s a wet ride as this Lancha has no cover but luckily my bags are all wrapped and waterproof so it passes easily enough.

 

We dock at a different dock in Nuqui  and after climbing up to get change to pay the lancha captain the 15, 000 COP fare I head back down the other side of the steps.  Bad mistake and an embarrassing moment of the trip.  The locals try to warn me but it’s too late, as the concrete steps are impossibly slick with algae and my feet rush out from under me.  Once again I’m thankful for my theatre training, as for a big man, I know how to fall, something that has kept me alive on my endless travels. I crash to the slick concrete floor and slide down towards the dirty water, scrambling to find something to hold on to.  I manage and climb up to my feet and make it back to the boat, dirty and blushing but otherwise unharmed.

 

All the locals are immensely concerned but I smile and promise I’m fine.  They continue to tell me how it’s not safe to go down that side and I just bite my tongue and grin to keep from saying “Well I know that now.”

 

I spend the rest of the morning between the airport and the street food stall which makes me a delicious lunch of meat agin, then by midafternoon I’m back aboard the 15 seater plane bound for Medellin, so glad I paid the money, took the time, and made the effort to visit Colombia’s wild Pacific Coast.  If you can, don’t miss it.