Glorious Mud!

As hangover cures go, I´ve always sworn by the Full English and a Bloody Mary. But after two days in Cartegena - mainly spent out on the tiles - I was in need of something approaching a miracle cure.

Cartegena is the jewel of all colonial cities. Its perfectly preserved squares and fountains, high walls and blooming balconies offer respite from the boiling heat of the day; museums and galleries document with great glee the various Spanish successes against British pirates (most famously Francis Drake) ; and a plethora of smart shops and expensive restaurants cater for Cartegena´s beautiful people. Unfortunately the tourist dollar they are seeking here is from cruise ships and wealthy South Americans, rendering much of what is good about Cartegena well out of our price range, and peppering the streets with ´living statues´and persistent hawkers, but all things considered its a lively and interesting place to spend time.


On our second night in Cartegena we found ourselves wandering around town, looking for something both fun and affordable. Seeing as we completely failed to find the party on the 20th floor of the five star hotel where all the models and pop stars were hanging out (as a fellow backpacker joyfully informed us in a loud Finchley accent the next morning: "I´m from London, yeah, and I´ve seen some wicked parties, but this was the best party I´ve ever been to in my whole life.") we headed for Via Arsenal where the clubs and bars are concentrated, only to end up in a club resembling a school disco, or as a friend more accurately put it, a ´torture-chamber´, before deciding to do what Cartegenans do best: Rum and Salsa! We spent a long night in a series of salsa joints, getting down with the locals and drinking bad mojitos until the small hours.







At 9am the next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and were duly bundled onto a tour bus to Volcan Baru. Residual alcohol levels still being fairly high, I managed the one and a half hour ride out of the city in good spirits, although Jonny - squeezed between the Spanish speaking tour guides at the front - looked a bit the worse for wear. This particular volcano is renowned for its health reviving properties and, as the local myth goes, had once spouted fire and lava but was charmed by a local witchdoctor and now conveniently splurges a ready supply of soft mud in a crater about the size of a large jacuzzi. Could this be the miracle hangover cure I was looking for? Although I´d seen pictures of friends covered from head to foot in volcano mud, nothing had quite prepared me for this


We donned our oldest swimming gear and descended the stairs to the suprisingly cool mud bath which contained 30 or so Colombians, including 3 toothless male masseurs waiting to give you a good rub down. I wasn´t sure which I was more afraid of - the mud or the men - but it soon became clear that we would all have to surrender ourselves completely to this surreal experience. The bouyant mud holds you up, so rather that sinking into the crater you float on the top. Whatever position you end up in it is notoriously difficult to move, not because the mud offers that much resistance, but more for fear you´ll lose your balance and end up head first and stuck in the mud.

At this point, looking around at various people wallowing in grey matter, the last thing you expect is to see someone you recognise. So when one of the girls from our tour bus said to Jonny (fresh from his mud massage) "you seem familiar" and he said the same back, I nearly fell off my virtual `mud chair´. Not only had these two met before, but it had been on another trip in Bolivia - a full seven years previously! Obviously South America has a magnetism that keeps people coming back: who knows who we´ll meet next time, or where.



After Cartegena, we mooched up the coast to the beach resort of Taganga, stepping stone to the jungle and beaches of Parque Natural Tayrona. Taganga is a little party town as well, with giant speakers on every street corner pumping out the local rhythmns to anyone passing, and the ubiquitous Israeli travellers host Psy-trance parties that only ever start at midnight, meaning over 25s like myself can´t stand the pace and decide to go to bed early (pah! who wants to listen to trance anyway?) . But Parque Tayrona - less than an hour away - couldn´t be more different.


Strict door searching policies mean that there are absolutely no drugs or hard liquor allowed in the park - quite an achievement for Colombia. Tayrona, the park workers told us, is where Colombians come to get away from it all, and what better place for Colombia´s party loving citizens to dry out than the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the Caribbean? Over years of travel, we have seen some series beaches, but even Costa Rica or Thailand´s finest would struggle to live up to the beauty of Tayrona. Huge rocks jut out into the sea, forming perfect bays between the sands, and natural rock breakers between them form huge swimming pools, making swimming here much safer than many of the beaches in, for example, Panama or Goa. If you´re willing to sleep in a hammock or a tent, this is the place to chill out, dry out and toast yourself to a happy shade of marron. As hangover cures go, volcanoes and beaches sure beat the Bloody Mary!