las Piedras y las Cascadas in Minca, Colombia

Another little excursion in Minca, this one free and easily reached by foot in 15 minutes, is a swim at Las Piedras which means the rocks in English. Naturally it involves crossing a bamboo foot bridge.


It's a place where two rivers meet with huge boulders.











Family floating time.


Jumping off boulders into the deep is a great experience in bravery! Local kids look on as jack does a chicken jump.




las Cascadas is reached by a sweaty uphill climb through some beautiful jungle. It took us some 90 minutes of complaining to trek up here. We thought that it was a 20 minute walk which got our hopes up for immediate gratification. Every local we passes on the way arrived up the waterfall was only around the next bend.


It's operated by a family that has built a low cement wall at the bottom of the waterfall to create charges admission, around 6 usd for all of us to get in.





Like I said the walk was beautiful, but the level of moaning and groaning by the kids tells me that they want nothing to do with a visit to the Appalachian trail where we would camp and hike for days. In fact when I asked them if they would be interested in doing something like that the resounding no was pretty clear.

All in all, it's worth a visit to Minca for the beautiful natural attractions. But whatever you do avoid the place on the weekend where it is literally packed to the gills with Colombians on a family weekend getaway. Also bring plenty of money as there is no ATM in Minca, the nearest one is 30 minutes away in Santa Marta. Accommodation is easy to find just by showing up and walking around. The best thing is to stay at a place with a kitchen so you can save a little money by cooking in, as most of the restaurants are overpriced. You can walk to all of the sights we went to, but by foot it would take 2 hours each way. It's easy, but not cheap, to get a moto or a taxi.

We have been in Minca for four days, and plan to leave tomorrow for the crazy journey to Mompos.