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Our tour of La Guajira began when our guide, Pedro, picked us up in our hotel in Santa Marta at 4:45AM. We were driven a few hours away to Riohacha, the gateway to and capital of La Guajira. We had breakfast and changed vehicles to a large pickup truck with our Wayúu driver.
Riohacha
We had a bit of time to wander around Riohacha and do some souvenir shopping. Riohacha doesn’t have much to see except for a decent beach with a historic pier.
There’s an interesting monument full of faces and bodies of political and military figures, but my favorite thing about it was that it was topped off with a guy in a sombrero playing an accordion.
The main road along the beach is lined with Wayúu people selling traditional crafts like colorful mochilas (bags) and other souvenirs. This is the best place to buy them in all of La Guajira and Colombia. We were able to get mochilas for great prices. In other parts of Colombia, the price can be double or more.
Manaure
When we finished lunch, we jumped into the pickup and headed for the salt flats of Manaure. Along the way, the driver stopped to buy watermelon from a Wayúu fruit stand on the road in the middle of nowhere.
We made a quick drive through the town of Manaure, passing by the Church of Santa Rita de Casia (Iglesia Santa Rita de Casia) and through the small town center.
Just outside of town are the salt flats, which makes up the main economy in the area. We were shown the flats and the processing plant. Pedro gave us an explanation of how the salt was produced, purified, and exported.
We were also approached by several barefoot Wayúu children that appeared out of nowhere. They were pulling at our pockets and asking for money and water. It was a sad sight but they seemed like happy children and wanted to pose for photos with us.
Uribia
Our next stop was Uribia, the indigenous capital of Colombia. It wasn’t a long stop and there didn’t seem to be much in town anyway.
The most interesting thing for me were the men selling bootlegged gasoline from nearby Venezuela. Gas is much cheaper there than in Colombia and people bring it across the porous border for a profit. They sell it in plastic barrels and jugs and even one liter water bottles. This was a recurring theme all over La Guajira. We would drive past small huts with signs advertising gas for sale and liter bottles of water filled with gasoline hanging from trees in the hot desert sun.
After our short stop in Uribia, we set off on a long and bumpy ride to Cabo de la Vela.
