Ladrilleros, Whale watching, and the Pacific Coast

( the trip and photos are from a month ago - just getting around the adding a bit of writeup) 


The first trip we had was a great trip to the Pacific Coast just west of Cali. I was really curious to see what the coast would be like, as there are hundreds of kilometers of coastline with almost no development or tourist infrastructure.  How could this huge coast be so neglected and untraveled, and seemingly isolated from the rest of Colombia?  Futhermore, by a terrific coincidence, the night before we left we went to a festival of Afro-Pacific music in Cali ( which is worthy of its own post) and we loved it and we were excited by the love for African-Pacific  culture at the festival.  

The first challenge to getting to the coast was the harrowing bus ride over the mountains. It turned out that we had a super crazy driver who drove the bus as if it was a Ferarri, and was trying to beat his personal record from the other hundreds of times he had done the route. Leaving Cali it was straight up over the mountains on a twisty windy road for two hours.  I got sick, Simon got sick, and even Oliver, unable to see over the seats out the window and lured into watching Die Hard, got sick as well.  One interesting part was after we made it over the mountain and rejoined the bigger road, it was an amazing construction site, huge tunnels and bridges and a super impressive four lane divided highway in progress.  Because it turns out the port we were headed to, Buenaventura, handles 70 percent of Colombias trade, and there is a major effort underway to reduce travel times between Buenaventura and Bogota and other major cities.  Once we got to Buenaventura, we didn't really stay to look around, but headed right to the ferry dock to get on to our destination.  I was curious to look around, but the view of a big steamy port city, at low tide on a muddy estuary, was not very compelling.  

The next part of our journey was from Buenaventura to Ladrilleros on a ferry,  basically a huge panga, with a roof, a driver up in a cockpit, and twin 200s.  A nice trip out of the estuary and a few smaller stops before getting to Juanchaco.  Juanchaco had lots of life around the pier, with the watching of ferries and sightseeing coming and going. But the beach was quite polluted and litter strewn and not inviting.  The exciting part was that from there we were to head to the next town over, Ladrilleros on motos, so it was a driver, Kara and Oly on one moto, and another driver, Eric and Simon and the duffel bag on another moto. One dollar from dock to hotel.  Drove  around a huge navy base and through the town of Ladrilleros to our hotel.

The kids favorite transportation

Our hotel (http://www.reservaaguamarina.com/ ) was probably one of the best in town, but seemed pretty simple.  A few acres along the bluff with amazing sunset views, a nice pool with hangout area/ bar/ hammocks next to it, and a nice restaurant on the bluff with great views of the ocean. Whales were spotted from breakfast more than once.  We had a little cabin, with beds for kids upstairs, and bed for us downstairs. Rainwater showers were just outside.  Kara couldn’t believe that the hotel does not supply any drinking water, and we had to go to a store down the street to buy anything bigger than a tiny bottle.  

The town of Ladrilleros was an interesting little town.  In the interior there was one main muddy street, with shops, hotels, and restaurants along, and a mix of Colombian tourists and locals.  On the beach side, apparently there used to be a broad sandy beach with palms, that a tractor transport brought you along to the hotels. However the beach has all moved away, apparently is a few hundred meters offshore in a reef, but along most of the town and most of the town the cliffs go down directly to the waves.  We did go along the the beach in town, and the waves and water were nice, but the water is very murky/ cloudy with sediment, probably from the rivers up stream, and quite covered in garbage at the tideline, probably from Buenaventura.  

Simon and the high tide line

A society full of sandals and water bottles

We really liked walking around in the town, stopping in the shops to chat with people, and seeing the village life.  The town is mostly African-Colombian, with a mix of upland mestizo Colombians, and a few residents of a local Indigenous tribe.  At night we went to a concert at a cultural center in town, with Afro-Colombian kids in a marimba band, and women and girls from the nearby indigenous village doing traditional dance.   

The highlights of the tip were the two boat tours that we signed up for, whale watching, and jungle exploring.  For the whale watching tour we got to start out with the fun of tripling on a motorbike, back to the pier at Juanchaco, where we got some information about the local National Park, from a small Visitor Center there. And then into the panga not very far off shore to see the whales. Basically we mostly followed along a pair of baby and mother who were swimming along.  The baby was a month or two old and already as big as the panga.  The fun was the baby doing lots of breaching and getting its body out of the water. The mom mostly stayed alongside and shepherded the baby.  Another hightlight for me was the Isla de las Palmas, an awesome uninhabited island just behind where we were watching the whales. Plenty of nesting sea birds and sea caves, and looks like an awesome place  to go back and do a sea kayak.

baby humpback breaching

The second trip we didn't quite understand where we were going, but we walked from the hotel through the town, past the indigenous village, and down into a landing in the mangroves behind the town.  We had a small group, with a nice local guide we had met in town at a store near the hotel, and a canoe with a small motor.  We set out and had an entrancing ride through the mangroves, and the surrounding jungle.  First we headed upriver to a beautiful swimming hole, with a great jumping off spot, a nice waterfall to play on, and spectacular jungle all around.  We shared the swimming hole with another large group of Colombian tourists, but it was fun.  Next we headed down river and into the mangroves and out to the sea. We went out through the mouth of a huge sandbar to a small Afro-colombian community eponymously named Barra.  We had lunch of fresh fish on the beach, played soccer and made sandcastles.  We had a fun swim out in the waves, much cleaner this time, and a nice shave ice out in the middle of the beach.  The water temperature was just perfectly perfect.  

Overall on the trip we were just feeling like being travelers again, being out there in the day to day adventures, and how fun and good it felt to be doing it with the kids.  Certainly every day the kids had some low point or tough spot, but in generally it felt great to be out in new places and little villages exploring the world.  We felt pretty lucky, we had good weather and calm seas to see the whales, we had nice weather at the beach.  The next day it was rainy and the seas were  rough and we headed home.  We got Dramamine, good seats, and a nice safe driver on the way back over the mountain and got home fine.