about an hour from the northern coast of columbia it's a town called minka. minka is a place
without atms place without air conditioning
a place without a supermarket people buy their fruit from the local tianas
they get cash from the big city if you got to do banking you got to go an hour away to santa marta
restaurants don't post their hours they just they just close when they feel like it
the bakery down the street they open when the guy wakes up and they close when they run out of bread
mink is that kind of town and i've been here for the past week enjoying everything about this place
but one of the appeals of minka is not just the town itself
but the nature surrounding it and in today's video i'm going to show you a bit of what it looks like
but first let me show you what my hostel looks like it's it's a pretty cool place
hey bro how are you doing
music and stuff right yeah and a friend of mine works here and yeah just just this really like
hanging out like doing some yoga with each other cool it's a german guy named alex
he gave me a beer last night what else what else this place is called eco point echo point
this will give you a little idea of the size of minka you got the main road you got the river
it's a nice little town
so this is the common space but the coolest
thing about this spot is the view down below take a look at this
i can already feel the cooler air coming off the river do you want to see up close let's go
by the way i'm not getting paid or anything to make this a video this is not an ad i just think
it's a cool space i want to share it with you i love hostels some people have a misconception
about hostels that they uh they're just for young people or party types or whatever but i've met a
lot of the most interesting people in my life just in hostels like this and when you're lucky and
you get one next to a beautiful river like the one behind me it's a pretty special experience
this spot here has a pretty good cup of coffee 2 000 pesos for cafe organico
lots of interesting products in here pollen
but perhaps the real minka exists beyond the town itself
of course it's the nature in the mountains that brings people here
so i want to take you on an adventure it's about an hour's hike from where we are now
there's a look at the uh the town church
nice bit of symbolism there the fish with a belly full of plastic check out the spot on the left
with the nice garden in front that's a restaurant a lot of interesting places around here actually
always nice to have some free filtered water on a hot day
save a bit of money and also save a bit of plastic
from ending up in the fishies like we uh like we saw before just then a random act of kindness
oh yeah this part so we were literally walking on the way to the trekking that
we were doing that day and uh i guess i forgot my sunglasses the day before
at this restaurant not only did she come out and give me that like she remembered my face
and held on to the sunglasses waiting for me to pass again she said i have something for you i
have something for you and she ran back and she grabbed these sunglasses which i guess i forgot
yesterday when i was having my lunch i'm surprised she couldn't even remember they're just a plain
black pair of sunglasses but uh that's just the type of town this is good people out here
want to start that's bamboo behind me one thing that surprised me when i arrived here was uh
yeah seeing all the bamboo growing in colombia i usually associate bamboo with
asian countries but maybe i am incorrect maybe it is indigenous to colombia as well
if there's any uh bamboo experts out there let me know but
it's a cool type of tree isn't it
cascadas de marinca welcome to the marinka waterfalls
hey santa this is your second time dominca
what do you like about this place so much that you want to come back the
thing i love about it is the energy here the sierra nevadas in general in this location
are really magical even the dogs of the town are just chilling you know and the people
yeah really at the end of the day i feel like a lot of it has people here entrances
in my heart
do not start the garden
okay i won't
wow
interesting message here i think that's a slight mistranslation because wild you know we almost
associate wild as being a good thing so you're so wild you're so crazy but in spanish the word
is more similar to savage you know one who is uncivilized savage is not who lives in the forest
the savage is the one who destroys it the one who is behaving in an uncivilized way
in a way against humanity not the one who lives there but the one who destroys it
something to think about especially in a beautiful place like this
oh yeah this part was pretty cool when we got to the second waterfall oh did i mention there's a
second waterfall yeah there's a second waterfall and when we got there there was this girl sitting
all alone painting on a watercolor set and she was painting this beautiful picture of the waterfall
anyway we started talking to her and she'd been painting all of her travels through colombia
wow wow in mean guy painting now i start to paint him my idea is pranking all my scrubbing
i don't know why i don't remember her name or even where she's from
i think she's from chile or paraguay or something anyway whoever you are
if you ever see this video leave a comment your work is really cool
after chilling at the second waterfall we decided to take a motorbike taxi back to the city these
guys just wait at the entrance to marica falls i think they cost about 10 000 to get back to minka
so i'd recommend if you do this trip bring a bit of extra cash in case you want snacks
or in case you want to ride back to town anyway by this point we're both really hungry so we decided
to go to a restaurant called casa christie this is the same place where the woman found my sunglasses
it only made sense to come back well a one-hour trek just turned into a uh
10-minute moto ride uh now we're going to get some lunch
okay as i was walking in the guy just reminded me about my sunglasses
just on the wall above sienna you can see some of the uh
some of the traditional outfits of the indigenous people to this region sierra nevada mountain range
very distinct look with the all whites were you saying it has something to do with the snowy peaks
snowy mountain peaks yeah it has to do with the purity of the sierra nevadas at the peak
it's not really snow actually though it's ice which is what fernando uh the guy that owns
the hostel that we're staying at was explaining that it doesn't actually snow up there it's just
so cold the air up there that it just and the condensate instantly freezes
falafel with mushroom sauce some fries some salad some rice of course a bowl of soup to start
not a bad lunch
so what is minko really well for me it's just a place that tourists and colombians alike
can go to escape the big city and to remember what colombia is really all about kind people
beautiful landscapes and a deep connection to the past which lives on until today
gracias
and with that i'm gonna leave you with some closing shots of the sunset
i see it right in front of me and uh i can tell it's gonna be a good one
and as the sun sets on this video the sun is also setting on my columbia series this is the last
full video i'm gonna have from columbia where will we be going after that well only time will tell
but i'm forever grateful for everyone who's out there watching me on this journey
supporting real travel content trying to show people that the world is not scary
people are more friendly than you might think and the world is full of adventures
for those who go looking gracias at todo los colombianos
hasta la proxima... dan