There’s a flamingo colony that lives off the northern coast of Colombia in a national park, the Santuario de Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos. We decided to go check it out. Alejandro set it all up for us, so all we had to do was get there.

On the day we went, Alejandro loaned us a sim card and explained how we needed to get to Camarones and how our flamingo viewing would go from there. Ha. We had to take some sort of public transportation from the main drag and magically find Raul, who was to be our guide for the day.

So we walked up to the main drag and found a little mini bus that was headed in the right direction.

Super entertaining. One guy drove, another guy basically hung on to the open door trying to recruit more people to ride with us. The little bus was packed. It was comfortable enough for the hour ride.

Once we got to Camarones, Raul was waiting right where we got off the bus with a couple of motos for us to hop on. Good thing, as our borrowed sim card had about a minute of talk time on it. That’s how we got to the park.

At the entrance to the park, Raul explained that the normal method of viewing the flamingos wasn’t going to work because they were out too far. Normally they just paddle around in a little rowboat until they get close to the birds. This time they were so far out, way around the point, so we’d have to continue on the motos to find them. Apparently it was shrimping season, and all the shrimp fishermen had scared off the flamingos to the far reaches of the park.

We hopped back on the bikes and went off through the sort-of desert on various trails. It was fantastic. If somebody had told me even two days ago that I was going to absolutely LOVE traipsing around the forest on the back of a dirt bike behind some dude I’d never met, I would have informed them they were bat shit crazy. But. It was amazing.

We finally got out to where the flamingos were hanging out. We could only drive so far out, then walk so much further to get close to them. The idea was to not scare them away. So we got within about 30 feet and just sat on the sand to watch them.

That was pretty cool too. I’d never really seen flamingos in that large of quantity. There must have been a hundred of them gathered in one place. They all kind of move at once, and eat at once, and ruffle their feathers at once. They’re really weird birds. Super cool, though. And you can’t possibly observe the group behaviors at the local zoo…

Back on the moto to the entrance of the park. I noticed Lorenzo, the guy driving my bike, was way less gentle on the way back. Guess I earned my stripes on the way out.

Back with Raul, we were sort of informed that we were expected for lunch at Alejandro’s friend’s place. That was some of the best fish stew and garlic shrimp I’ve ever had. And the coconut rice…. Mmm.

Raul arranged for motos back to the main drag, and when they dropped us off, they asked for payment. We’re pretty sure we got taken for cash, but at the end of the day it was like $1.30, so… Maybe we should have asked Raul if they were included. Lessons learned.

We decided while we were here to head on to Rioacha. One of the kids that had driven our motos got us situated in a carrito, which is just a private car that gives rides.

When we arrived, the driver asked if we wanted to be dropped off at the market. We said yes, as the artisan market in Rioacha is supposed to be awesome. Hmmm. We got dropped off at the market, alright, but it was the food and fruit market, not the artisan market we’d heard about and were expecting. Interesting.

We only wandered for a few minutes, then decided good enough. We walked back up to the main drag and literally flagged down a bus.

Another interesting experience, the bus. It was a big, crowded bus. And hot. And the guy that came asking for us to pay him asked for 3.000 more COP per person than the guy that let us on had said. I told him no. Thankfully, he seemed okay with that and actually brought us back the correct change, which seemed to be iffy for a sec… We were pretty impressed by the end of the trip how honest people were down there. They’d try to get as much of you as they could, but once a price was agreed upon, they were honest about it and brought you the correct change.

All in all, this experience was about as cool as it could have been, and certainly one to remember.