About an 8 hour bus ride from Cartagena is a little jungle town called Minca. It’s a popular place for tourists to stay before multiple day hiking treks, but also a great place to spend a few days getting eaten by mosquitos. We chose the latter, and we would do it again for those views!

Jungle Joes

How could we visit the Colombian jungle and pass up staying at a place called Jungle Joes? We found it randomly while scrolling through Hostelworld, but once we got there we realized it’s a well-known place and Jungle Joe himself is a big deal in Minca. He runs a tour agency that puts on some of the best tours in the area, and since we were staying at his hostel we got a huge discount!
The hostel was located about a 15 minute walk down a dirt path from the main part of town in a more secluded part of the jungle. This lead to some absolutely gorgeous views, but also to some serious confusion when we got there. We had our taxi (who, side note, we talked down from 80k pesos to 40k, shoutout to our killer bartering skills these days) drop us off on the highway where the location was on google maps, but then realized we had no idea how to actually get to it. After some fruitless searching we resolved to walking the extra 20 minutes to town along the highway – not our first choice – until we finally found enough service to call Joe and ask for directions. Turns out we should have gone all the way to town and then walk down the trail (how were we supposed to know that??) but luckily he pointed us to another secret path we could use from the highway up through the jungle. We made it just in time for one of the most gorgeous sunsets I’ve ever seen, which made the unexpected and sweaty hike much more worth it.
The hostel itself is actually an ecolodge, fully self-sustaining with solar panels and rain water. It’s a group of very cool bamboo structures and you are very immersed in the jungle – the mosquitos and lizards are always close by to remind you!

The Tour

Since we stayed at Jungle Joes we got a huge discount on his full-day Minca tour, which was absolutely worth it! The tour started with a short hike to a coffee farm where they walked us through the growing, harvesting, and production process of coffee. Then we of course got to taste the coffee – so good – as well as a coffee liqueur they make on site – so so good. The best part of the coffee tour was actually not the coffee though, it was the amazing toucan that stopped by and put on a show while we were there! He flew into the little structure we were tasting in and showed off jumping around the shelves and flying across the structure. The owner says he shows up often and loves the attention of the tours, and we definitely gave him the attention he craved! I had never seen a bird in the wild that unique and beautiful, he almost looked fake. Such a unique experience you could only get in a place like that!
After the coffee farm tour, we continued our hike up to a waterfall. There are several waterfalls in the area that are popular to hike to, but humorously we happened to hike to the same one John and I had hiked to ourselves the day before. But that just means we (aka John – too cold for me) got to swim in it twice so no complaints! On our hike our guide pointed out a bunch of plants and insects along the way, highlights being:
– A group of caterpillars on a tree that “dance” when you make noise. They’re poisonous and their movement is actually a defense mechanism to sting you if you get too close. But a very entertaining trick! (Video below)
– They have two different types of termites that coexist on the same trees. The interesting part was that the queen termites can produce two different types of offspring – potential princesses and normal “worker” termites – and they choose when they want to make a princess. Also that queen termites are full of protein, so if you’re in a bind lost in the jungle that’s a good source of food!
After our waterfall adventure, the tour group was taken back to Jungle Joes hostel where they cooked us a delicious meal. They then had experts give us a presentation on different animals native to Colombia, a bamboo building presentation, and then finally a chocolate making workshop. The chocolate making was obviously the best part – they started from raw cacao and roasted and grinded it until it became chocolate. We got to taste it at each step and it was truly delicious!
The presentation on animals was also interesting, though it was largely around all of the poisonous animals they have that can kill you almost instantly. Apparently they have a frog that you can just touch and be killed! Indigenous people used to extract the venom and use it in darts for hunting. We had actually seen a very poisonous snake on our walk from the hostel that morning, and learned more about it in the presentation. The jungle is no joke!

Tayrona National Park

After we left Minca we headed about an hour away to Tayrona National Park, a beautiful protected wilderness right on the northern coast of Colombia. We stayed at a hostel outside of the entrance the night before we went in so we could leave our luggage there, and then got to the entrance right when it opened so we could reserve a camping spot on the beach. We had read some very mixed reviews online about how fun the park was going to be, but we decided to risk it and we’re so glad we did!
From the entrance, we hiked about 6 miles through some very very muddy trails to our final destination of Cabo San Juan. Our camping reservation included a two person tent with a mattress and pillows. For two people that are used to sharing a backpacking tent and very thin camping pads, this felt like true luxury!
Once we got there we spent the day hanging on the beach and swimming. At sunset we had dinner at the restaurant on the beach which was the one disappointment of the excursion – my meal was practically inedible. But my fault for ordering pasta on a beach in Colombia, it was a questionable choice!
The heat in the park was no joke, I think the low got down to 80 degrees, which made sleeping a little difficult. But we got up with the sun and went out to the beach to watch the sunrise which was truly magical. We also took a morning ocean swim and had the whole place to ourselves!
The hike back to the entrance was pretty exhausting in the heat, but we saw monkeys and lizards and even a baby crocodile! We rewarded our sweaty/muddy selves with a popsicle when we got to the end which made it all worth it.
We think all of the bad reviews online had too high of expectations, and we would definitely recommend people go and camp on the beach, just be prepared to be muddy and hot and you’ll have a great time!

I was definitely ready to leave the hot and humid Caribbean by the end of this adventure, so back down south we go!

Christine