Wednesday, March 15, 2023: Don Diego River/Los Naranjos (Author: J)
(Photo: Our final sunset at Casa Tayrona)
Our plan for our final day in Los Naranjos was to take a tubing trip down the Don Diego River. This is not an activity I would have selected if I had planned the trip without help. But P and I agreed that Wild About Colombia’s description (“Enjoy a morning’s tubing excursion, where you’ll float gently down a crystal-clear stream through lush forests with views of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta”) sounded appealing.
In the months leading up to the trip, D displayed his usual level of interest in trip planning. I made a few attempts to show him the itinerary, but it was always “too early to think about vacation.” That meant that our tubing plans were a surprise for D. And not necessarily the fun kind. You see, D has a fear of just about anything that floats on water from cruise ships to inner tubes. I don’t know what went on at Ohio’s Boy Scout camps in the 80s, but it has left D with a firm conviction that boating is humanity’s leading cause of death. So, on Tuesday afternoon, when Cristián mentioned the pickup time for our tubing excursion, D’s face momentarily betrayed his discomfort. Fortunately, the only thing that D’s midwestern upbringing has instilled in him more strongly than a fear of boats is a distaste for making any kind of scene. So, D smiled, nodded, and wished Cristián a goodnight. Tubing was a go and it ended up being one of our favorite activities.
Our pickup time for the tubing trip was a very humane 8:30. That meant that we had time for breakfast at Casa Tayrona before heading out. We enjoyed some crepes, waffles, and fruit. This was apparently a meager breakfast by the hotel’s standards. We were offered and declined eggs, pastries, and juices.
We ate and then hit the road for the 30-minute drive to the river. Along the way, Cristián talked to us about the local indigenous groups. He has been working to develop tourism projects with several of the indigenous communities on Colombia’s Caribbean coast and was clearly excited about that work.
Eventually, we pulled into a dirt parking area along the banks of the Don Diego. (Pro tip: If you need to use a restroom, this is the place to do it. There are no restrooms as the river’s mouth, although I did find a bush ominously adorned with toilet tissue). In the parking area, we were met by a local who would serve as our tubing guide. Cristián would head out in front of us in a motorboat so that we would have a way to get back up the river at the end of our float.
We applied sunscreen and bug spray and headed down to the river. (Pro tip 2: If you prefer not to fry little strips of your skin in oil, avoid applying bug spray after applying sunscreen. It’s been almost 2 months since our trip and the stripes of sunburn on my legs have only just healed). I was touched by the fact that Cristián had noticed that P was looking a bit pink and had brought along a floppy hat for him to wear. As an aside, P was not sunburnt; he is sensitive to sunscreen – including so-called hypoallergenic sunscreen – and so turns pink within the first day or two of all of our vacations. Finally, we took the unnecessary step of donning lifejackets and started our float down the river.
Tubing the Don Diego is exactly as Wild About Colombia described. It is a lazy float down a fairly shallow river. Once you get out of the town where the tubing trips launch, there is beautiful scenery on both sides of the river and the opportunity to view birds and howler monkeys in the trees. The river does have small caiman, but the shallowness of the water quickly assuaged my fear of becoming a caiman snack. It would be nearly impossible for a small turtle to swim under your tube, never mind a caiman.
We had an enjoyable float almost all the way out to the ocean. Just before the Don Diego joins the sea, it makes a sharp left. A small sandbar separates the river and the sea at the bend, creating a convenient place for tubers to disembark. We hopped out of our tubes at just about the most picturesque place imaginable. We had the river to our left, a small beach with a few hammocks to our right, and the ocean in front of us. And because we tubed in the morning, we had the place practically to ourselves; there was only one other family on the river with us.
After spending some more time enjoying the scenery, we hopped into a speedboat and headed back up the river to our car. Goyo then whisked us back to Casa Tayrona for our final afternoon. On the way back, we stopped at a produce stand to enjoy some more of Colombia’s excellent tropical fruits.
After lunch at Casa Tayrona, P and I headed to the pool while D went to get a massage. (At approximately $25, it was a bargain we could not pass up). P and I hopped in the pool and started to swim, but we were soon joined by a blond-haired woman with her similarly blond and very naked toddler. Perhaps there’s a judgmental American parenting book I’m not aware of that describes how Scandinavian toddlers never poop in pools. However, my own life experience did not instill confidence in the wisdom of swimming with a naked toddler. P and I quickly got out of the pool and retreated to the seaside hammock cabana. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing. In case you were wondering, the naked toddler did not poop in the pool.
That evening, we had an early dinner and headed to bed early in anticipation of another early wakeup the next day.
Travel Monkeys 