Taganga Episode IV: Cacti

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This week is "Taganga Week" at Xave's Xlog. Check it out:

Taganga Episode I: The Trailer

Taganga Episode II: The Town

Taganga Episode III: Wildlife

As I mentioned yesterday, on Saturday I decided to go for a hike in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - one of the many mountain ranges in the world called Sierra Nevada (it translates to "snow covered mountain range"). It's the highest coastal mountain range in the world, reaching an altitude of about 5700m, though that part is a little more inland. Here's a view of the foothills surrounding Taganga.

There certainly weren't any official trails, and the trails that did exist, presumably used by locals for everyday life, which includes leading their pack animals around, as I surmised by all the 

around, were few and far between. It was pretty exhausting in the 30˚ heat, but luckily it was a cloudy day, making the temperature a little more bearable. I saw lots of great animals, and also some excellent scenery. Including cacti. Look at all the cacti!

There is a dude in this cacti! Look in the middle. He must not have been comfortable. But he must have also been like "dude, I'm sitting on a cactus, this makes me a MAN." Maybe it's a rite of passage around here.

This looks like a cactus and a stick got in a fight and then at the end they got their clothes tangled up and now it's just awkward.

Aww, a baby cactus! I wonder what its first words were. Probably "guys, this is a really painful existence. I would not recommend being a cactus"

This is a cactus that I sat on. Obviously, this caused my butt to suddenly expand to 8 times its normal size, caused me to instantly leap 3 meters in the air while my legs made a fast running motion in the air, yell "ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-owwwwwwww" and then upon landing run around in circles until I found a pond where I extinguished my butt which was suddenly also on fire for some reason.

A cactus farm! I think that every morning the farmers get up at first light and milk the cacti. This is why there is such a high rate of hand injury among Colombian farmers. This is also why all the milk in Colombia is green. (the milk in Colombia is not green.)

Okay, that's all the cactus pictures/stories I have. Seeya tomorrow for Taganga Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Or something.