Acandí, Colombia - Polarsteps

Welcome to our favourite stop in Colombia, Capurganá! 🏵️🌴🌞 It takes some effort to get here though. In three days we travelled from Tayrona to here. No roads are leading either in or out of the city, so all traveling is over water. And the only boats leave at 8 o'clock from Necoclí. Capurganá is truly a two faced place. 🌚Let's first mention the shadow side of this location and the reason why this area is deep-red on our Government travel advice. Apart from tourists, more than 2000 people a day arrive in this small fishing village. They are not planning to return, however. Their only goal is to cross the Darien Gap and thereafter overland to the promised land: the United States. I'm talking about immigrants. Among them, apart from the logical largest group of Venezueluans, are travelling an insane amount of Chinese. Apparently, from China, you can only get visum-free to Ecuador and Venezuela. They keep these people strictly separate from tourists. The smugglers tell the new-home seekers that when they bother us, they will be killed. One of the reasons we felt perfectly safe. The boat transportation is separate, apparently because tourists were complaining about the smell. And after they disembark, they are directly transferred to a camp. This camp functions as the last stop in Colombia, before they disappear in the jungle. A sweaty, hard 3-5 day trek brings them to Panama. We had the most severe tropical thunder storm on the first night, and all we could think of was these poor immigrants. Let's go to the sunny part of Capurganá! 🌞 And sunny it was. Extremely. Liselot suffered a heat stroke and this became the reason to postpone our diving course. 💡Not-so-funfact: the only time Liselot had to vomit during our trip! After two days of bed rest, we found ourselves back in the water🤿. Since we loved the diving so much at Taganga, we decided to go for our advanced open water course! Over the period of two days, we made 5 dives and achieved our certificate. We cannot decide which dive was the best, they were all so beautiful and fun! However, the most special experience was saved for last: a night dive! At the bottom of the ocean we were surrounded by the spectacular bioluminescent plankton🦠. Wow! This is something you can be jealous of.

Country Guides:

Colombia