After having an amazing time with Roozbeh´s dad and Colombian girlfriend, Margarita. We were intent on finding some extreme adventure and getting to some place rugged as soon as possible. We needed help waking up from the serious comatose state we were in, we had spent too much time eating good food and getting way too pampered by Roozbeh´s Dad. Living in the lap of luxury kills your travel drive and makes you soft.
So we hit the road and headed to a little unknown slice of heaven called Capurgana.
Capurgana is a little town right on the border of
Panama. It is located on a little isthmus so beautiful and tranquil you cannot even imagine. It can only be reached by boat, which makes for a journey of historic proportions. It took us 4 bus rides on gravel and rocky roads (I felt like my insides were going to come out from all the bumping and shaking), a night in a local town called Turbo (that pretty much says it all) and then a 3 hour boat ride the following morning.
It was worth every torturous minute. Capurgana and the town right next to it, Sapzurro, are little Carribean dreams. There are no cars, only horse and cart, the electricity goes off by about 8 pm and they have only two computers for the whole town. The main pass times are walking around the town barefoot and eating sugar cane candy and coconut ice cream. They eat bananas and fish practically every meal with rice and coconut fish soup. It is very reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. It feels like you have been trapped in a time warp.
In Capurgana there is only one tiny school house. Grades first through fifth go in the morning and sixth grade through twelfth go in the afternoon. Hence all day you are running into groups of school kids drinking soda and screaming ¨hello!¨ and then running away laughing. There are kids everywhere, they are seriously coming out of the wood work. Every woman you see is holding at least one beautiful baby under her arm while she is making food or sweeping.
Capurgana is not one of the places on every backpacker's lips in Colombia. In fact it is not a popular backpacker's hang out at all. There are no ATMs so you have to bring all the cash you are gonna need with you, this seems to put most people off the idea of heading out that way. Sleeping through a noisy night in Turbo near an open sewer and a drunken pool hall, is also not very appealing to most travelers. Most people head east, opting to go to other places that can be more easily reached and are not quite so isolated like Santa Marta or Taganga; I could not be more thankful to them. I am so happy there are not a bunch of backpackers in Capurgana demanding wifi and sandwiches. This is a place where you live and eat like a local because you have no other choice.
Capurgana is surrounded by the thick Darien jungle, which is home to many beautiful hidden spots reached only by a sweaty jungle trek. A number of years ago this region was a real hot spot for the drug trade but now it is safe and highly patrolled by young and friendly members of the Colombian army who will give you crappy directions, but are trying to be helpful nonetheless.
This wild spot is one of the first places I've seen in South America that has not been already over-run with tourism. The people in Capurgana are really relaxed and go about their normal lives not paying much attention to you; it was wonderful. Obviously I did not blend in very well, but they really let me be part of the scenery. No one touts or tries to sell you over-priced, cheesy tours. If you need information about a hike or a hidden beach they will usually just point you in the right direction and then go back to their daily routine of doing pretty much nothing. The best part about staying here is the fact that you can do a three-hour hike to the border of Colombia and Panama and hang out for the day on a beautiful Panamanian beach called La Miel. La Miel was gorgeous and it felt really crazy crossing the border on foot with just your passport and a bathing suit.
When we had to leave I was absolutely heart broken. I felt like I had been let into a bizarre little Latin American Garden of Eden, and then God had abruptly kicked me out. But I know this is one of the places I will be back to visit as soon as possible. My mind is also very much at ease, because when I do get a chance to go back, I know this will be one of the few spots on this planet, that will look, and feel, exactly the same as when I left.
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