Our plans changed again during the day. We did not find anywhere that we liked to stop for the night along the highway so we pushed on to Santa Marta and Parque Nacional Tayrona.

The driving was easy for most of the day with the road flat and relatively straight as it traveled through very wet jungle lowlands and variously cattle, banana, and palm oil farms. However each village along the way presented large speed bumps to slow down the passing traffic. I am sure the justification was to provide some safety for local residents but in practice it looks more like the speed bumps are so that vendors get a chance to display their wares to passing traffic. For much of the day the villages were infrequent and the inconvenience from these speed bumps small. But as we got closer to Santa Marta the small villages appeared with increasing frequency and as a result the bumps really inhibited traffic.

Somewhat to our surprise we found our way to Parque Nacional Tayrona without too much trouble, though it took a little persistence as the access road to the park gate was in need of significant maintenance and the jungle was well on the way to reclaiming the road. After a brief discussion in broken English and Spanish with one of the army contingent guarding the gate we concluded that we could not enter as it was after 5:00pm. We camped at the gate. A swim in the Caribbean would have to wait a little longer.