The Caribbean Coast: My Birthday

Currently I´m traveling South America. I´ve been here for about 5 months and I really love it. I´m a solo traveller and I meet people along the way. I might should mention that I don´t speak spanish, at all. That makes it a little bit more complicated, but hey, theres always google translate and a lot international travellers as well.

Amongst all the good and fun times I´m having, there are a few times when I got a little homesick. Christmas, New Years and my birthday. That´s the few days in the year, when I wished my friends and family were with me.

 
In January I was in Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast in Colombia. And as it happens it was the time around my birthday. Because I´m all by myself and have no one here to treat me for my special day, I just got myself a PADI scuba dive certificate.

The course went for 3 days with a very big theoretical part, a pool dive and finally the ocean.

Since living and working in Australia and knowing how dangerous and deadly everything is and a very painful sting by a Portugese Man O War a year ago, I´m super afraid of EVERYTHING in the water.

My dive teacher, Leo, knew it and I gotta say that he was very patient.
 

 

 
The first dive was horrible for me. I´ve been in the ocean before but still, you never know what happens down there. Leo was amazing. He took my hand, he guided me through the water and every time I freaked out, he calmed me down. We´ve gone through all our exercises. Taking the regulator (which gives me air to breath) out of my mouth, taking the mask (which makes me to see if there comes a shark to attack me) off my face and a few buoyance exercises.

After a while i got used to the different breathing, but every now and then I stopped breathing (which I´ve heard a million times you should NEVER do) and Leo had to remind me.

I felt like a child in Kindergarten, where the teacher had to repeat and repeat everything at least a hundred times. I thought it is underdstandable as it´s my life we´re dealing with and not just something unimportant.

After 3 days of learning and diving I finally became a Open Water Scuba Diver. That was a very pleasant birthday present for myself and gave me another reason to celebrate.
 

 

 
The hostel I was staying at for the last week or so (I really love Santa Marta and the coast and the hostel) had the most amazing staff I´ve ever met. They would remember the name of every single guest, were super friendly and helpful. Santa Marta is usually a spot where travelers pass by and stay for 2 or 3 nights. So it was a bit hard for me, as I had to meet new people every single day. A few of the “older” ones I´ve met already were still there as well.

As it was my birthday and I just became a diver and it was friday, there were enough reasons to celebrate and drink. People are very generous when it comes to someones birthday, so I got one drink after another.

 
At around 9pm there was a power cut. Or at least thats what I thought, when suddenly all the people in the hostelbar started singing ‘happy birthday’ and the staff came out with a big birthday cake with a single candle on it.

That was a surprise. A big one!

Since living abroad I usually don´t have birthday cakes. The last one was when I lived in New Zealand and my travel friend Sarah bought me a cupcake. That was 2 years ago.

Anyway, the cake was still warm from baking and I shared with everyone in the hostel before we went out on the Chivas bus.

 
The Chivas bus is pretty much a bar/nightclub on wheels. They use old busses, put a bar and more or less good speakers in it, a few handels to hold on to and drink holdes.

Everyone gets on the bus and the bus goes to different locations while about 50 people in the back are drinking and dancing.

The first stop was the beach. I was already very tipsy and a few people and me went skinny dipping (my brain was too blury already and I refered to it as ‘skippy dinning’). We spent a good amount of time on the beach and I bumped into a girl I was traveling in Bolivia with for 4 weeks (I didn’t literally bump into her, but she jumped on me from behind and said she was so sure it was me because of my pink shorts. That was another big surprise that day).

Back on the bus we kept drinking and partying until we got to the next and sadly last stop for the night: a night club.

From going in the club until the next morning when I woke up, I don´t remember a lot. For sure it was a very good night and I´ve had a very enjoyable birthday. From fruit picking in Australia to bars in Thailand I am having a great place travelling the world