Cabo beach is the best area of Tayrona National Park. All of the park’s most beautiful beaches are within a thirty-minute walk from Cabo. Heading directly south from Cabo into the jungle, there’s a rocky trail that runs alongside a stream and leads to an old indigenous pueblo located at around 800 feet in elevation. The hike can take anywhere from one to four hours depending on how much time you spend exploring. By the time you reach the top, you’ll likely be drenched in sweat — and in our case, soaked by rain on the way down.

The trail is slippery when wet, and I don’t recommend wearing sandals like we did. At the top, you’ll find some stone steps and a few huts. The pueblo was once home to an estimated 2,000 indigenous people a couple thousand years ago. Now, only one family remains — and they didn’t look especially happy to see us.

Strangely, upon arriving, you’re asked to sign in with about ten pieces of personal information, including your ID number and profession. When I asked why, the lone man replied, “For control purposes.” That’s indigenous code for: “One day I’m going to show up at your house unannounced.”

Back near the beach and campground, you’ll find coconut trees everywhere. You need to be careful not to get hit — the trees are over fifty feet tall, and a falling coconut could easily split your head. While trying to sleep, I heard multiple heavy thuds from coconuts hitting the ground. When I asked the campground registrar how often people get hurt by falling coconuts, he said, “Oh, not many.”

“Two a month?” I asked. “No, very few,” he replied. “One a month?” He gave me a forced smile and started writing something in a black notepad while glancing at my name on the register.

Let me tell you, if you get hit by a coconut, you won’t become a statistic. They’ll just bury you in the jungle and say you got lost wandering off trail. I’ll be the only one who knows you were a coconut casualty.

At the park entrance, while reading the welcome sign, a coconut slammed into the ground just fifteen feet from us. Even if that coconut just hit my toes it would have buried my foot into the ground. Always keep your eyes to the sky to avoid walking under coconut trees, except at night when you need to keep your eyes to the ground so you don’t step on the many frog and squirt frog guts on your girlfriend’s leg. For some reason, that makes them shriek… the girl and the frog.

The Cabo campsite offers hammocks and tents for rent, costing between five and twenty dollars. You can also rent space on the second floor of the hut (see photo below) for about forty dollars, or a hammock on the beach for less than five — though the wind can make it chilly at night. A small stream sometimes empties into the sea at Cabo, and you may have to cross it to reach the hut.

The campground has four showers, six toilets, one sink, one large laundry sink, a small store, one cat, four dogs, seven geese, twenty-two chickens, eleven donkeys, nine horses, hundreds of small crabs and toads, and a conservative estimate of about a billion mosquitoes.

There’s one restaurant serving typical Colombian food, (or made to order), for under ten dollars a dish. If you are lucky, they may have fresh lobster I was only lucky enough to watch someone eat one.

On weekends, the campsite can host over two hundred people, mostly in their twenties, with about twenty percent being foreigners. There’s a small soccer field and enough space for Frisbee. Three families live on-site and maintain the grounds, which are kept reasonably clean. A gas generator provides electricity — it’s noisy, so I suggest setting up your tent on the opposite side of the generator. There's one electrical outlet available in the restaurant.

Aside from a flashlight and a cover for your tent mattress, nearly anything else you need can be bought at the camp store.