Punta Gallinas - pronounced punta gayeennas

It has been a while since I posted - blogging is a lot harder than you think. Unless you are a blogger, you will know that yourself.

However last night Vic and I were reunited for the first time since the trip and whilst we were doing some strong dancing to "hit me baby one more time" I thought to myself "I really should write up some more of our trip". It already feels like years ago so I should get on with documenting it so I can relive the magic again and again.

And so to last time - did we make it to Punta Gallinas?  After all the build up did we fall at the last hurdle? ? As I'm sure you have guessed the answers are yes we did and no we did not respectively. And exhale...

To get there actually seemed relatively easy to organise contrary to the guide book. Joanna had called and booked a boat, we all woke up at 430am and jumped in another not-so-comfy jeep and drove an hour to here to get a boat:

 Some strong looks for the ride:

It was around 2.5 hours on the boat - it was pretty rough and we got pretty wet but all this travelling became worth it when we arrived here:

Yes it looks like one of the photoshopped screen savers that you used to get on a PC back in the day. It's a real frickin photo!!! We were there. There was just a handful of buildings and no more than 20 people. It was a desert paradise. We unpacked and hit the "beach"/desert for a swim. Here's a classic strong photo of us all (apart from Sarah who was of course taking the snaps) and a shot of our hammock bedroom:

Swimming was hilarious because the surface under that lovely blue water was like quick mud - you sunk down into it pretty deep. It made getting out quite hard. 

After a nap we took yet another jeep because we wanted to head to the 50 metre sand dune. Apparently you slid right down it into the sea. What's not to like there?? 

Strong looks for the jeep - this time we were stood in the back, a bit like cattle: 

If you look closely you can see I am wearing goggles under my shades. This was probably the strongest look of the holiday for me. I'd got some sand in my eye so needed the goggles to protect myself from further grains getting in there. Vic said it was very Mad Max 3.....

Here are the six of us at the actual northern most point of South America - we stopped en route to the sand dune:

I particularly like Sarah's choice of outfit here - is it a top? Is it a dress? It's difficult to tell. I also like the way I look as if I have just one leg..... Taking the posing a bit too far there..... 

Then it was onwards to the dune. Kristen and Noam win best entry to the sea with their forwards slide in: 

Dan was second with his sprint down: 

It was simply amazing. Most amazing beach I have ever been on - it's hard to see the steepness of the dune from the pictures but it was getting on for vertical. Again, we were pretty much alone. We spent quite a lot of time body surfing the waves and coming up with different ways to tumble down the dune. Rolling down it sideways was interesting. Sand everywhere and a lot of dizziness when trying to stand up in the water. Noam also somersaulted down. No one else tried that. 

Then we watched the sun set: 

Then we went back and ate yet more lobster!!! Yum!!! 

We were there for a night and then we returned to Cabo de la Vela for another night before doing the whole journey in reverse. 

That's pretty much it - not the easiest place to get to but a magical time when you arrive. 

The return journey was not as successful as the one out there. As I said at the beginning, this blog is about the great times so I won't go into it much. We were all still together, all heading for Cartagena (which will be the subject of the next blog) and the bus was billed as being 5 hours. It wasn't. It was more like 11 hours. Including a stop to change a tyre and a stop to swap onto another bus as the original bus decided to terminate elsewhere. And there was no air con. It was hot. But that's South America for you - the buses are interesting.