Minca

After getting back from San Andres I decided to go back to Minca with the girls. The plane took us back to Barranquilla anyway which meant we were close, I heard Minca was great and so I decided to go with them. We found a cabby in the airport who told us that he would take us directly to the hostel we wanted to go to in Minca (Casa Loma). Usually, you have to get the bus station from the airport, then take a cab to Santa Marta and then take another cab to the hills of Minca. We hoped to avoid the transfers and make it convenient by taking a cab the whole way. Everything was fine until we got near Minca. As it turns out, our cab driver knew nothing about Minca nor did he know anything about the hostel we wanted. He tried to drop us off several times along the road thinking we were in Minca but was rebuffed by other townspeople who told him he needed to go further up to reach it, it's a tiny place with no signs. This is when it started getting weird.

He started complaining to himself and on the way up, his struggling cab broke down in the middle of the mountains. I should have known it was going to happen since he had to stop every hour and a half to refill his fluids on the way there. Our trip with this guy effectively ended there...but the experience didn't. A truck luckily drove by us on the road. I explained the situation to the driver and he was the only one who happened to know where or what Casa Loma was. He also explained that he was their competitor who had a far better hostel a little closer to town. He said that we could stay there for a night, and if we wanted go to Casa Loma later, we could. What was better was that he had room to take the girls to his hostel with all of our bags. The girls hopped in and I was left to settle the business with the cab driver.

We were still 20 minutes away from even the outskirts of the town of Minca, so I explained that obviously we were going to pay the fare but not everything. After some intense conversation with the cabby about prices, a passing motorcyclist told me he'd take me the rest of the way for a crazy $15,000 COP. I then offered $10,000 less to the cabby than what we agreed on since I had to pay extra to the moto guy. Our driver wasn't having it, he seemed to feel that we should pay everything since we were kind of close. After trying to argue rationally with him, I threw the amount minus $10,000 at him and just got on the back of the reved up motorcycle. The cabby then walks over, reaches over to the other guy's bike and turns it off telling him that I needed to pay him or else I wasn't leaving. At this point, I lost my temper and screamed at the guy that I wasn't paying for the whole cost. It was in the midst of this that I begin to realize that I'm surrounded by a crowd of other Colombians who had stopped to witness the scene. It must have been something to see a sweaty, red faced white guy yelling at a cab driver in spanish in the middle of the mountains. The townspeople, obviously on the Colombian's side, started yelling for him to call the police since I wasn't paying, the cabby guy was getting more agitated and getting in my face and the moto taxi guy was telling me that he was going to leave me unless I got on right then since it was going to rain and it was getting dark. I eventually paid him for the entire trip minus $5000 and scooted away amidst him calling me a "gringo duro" and calling my actions "sucio". I curse his family.

I was seeing red on the way up to Minca knowing I had just gotten screwed again in Colombia and was powerless to stop it. I like the country of Colombia itself but the people on the Coast leave a bad taste in my mouth after the month and a half I've been here. I'm just sick of everybody constantly breathing down my throat trying to sell me drugs and boat rides, giving me wrong information, begging for money and giving me inflated prices for everything since I'm a white guy. I feel constantly like I have to scrutinize every minute detail of every situation, transaction and conversation to avoid being taken advantage of. It's exhausting and making me loathe my experience here which is even worse. I realize it's not nice to generalize but at this point I don't care; people on the coast are scheisters. I need to get out of here.

Regardless, Minca itself was nice. It's not as much a city but a small collection of houses and tiendas that has sprung up because of its awesome views of the Sierra Nevadas and nearby waterfalls. Electricity and running water were intermittent at best and most meals and hanging out were done either by moon or candlelight. El Mirador hostel was the only pleasant mistake of the whole trip. Fernando (the guy who picked up the girls on the way) had a great little family run house in the mountains and we had super rico breakfasts in the mornings. It ended up being way better than Casa Loma which was hard to get to, cramped, full of tourists, more expensive and had no views to speak of. Really enjoyed my time there and even saw wild Toucans which was amazing. The area around Minca has 623 known species of birds and is great for birdwatching. The girls were going to a surf camp all the way back near Tayrona and so we got in the bed of a pickup truck that was going back to Santa Marta 3 days later. I can't believe I'm going back to Santa Marta...god help me.