I arrived to Neiva at the ass crack of dawn after a diabolical night bus from Cali. I reached Backpackers and Travelers Hostel, freshened up, inhaled a quick breakfast and jumped straight back onto another bus to head to the Tatacoa Desert.

Our day began with a boat trip down the Magdalena River. I’m sure this is lovely when the sky is blue and sun is shining but at this point, it started to piss with rain. That being said, it was on this boat ride, at my big big age of 28, that I learnt that iguanas exist in trees????? I thought they just roamed around at ground level. Anyways, we headed back onto the boat and made the bumpy, (and very wet), drive to the desert.

The Tatacoa Desert isn’t a ‘desert’ at all, it’s a ‘dry, tropical forest’. Some 350 million years ago, it was covered by the sea so the formations you can see are made up of a very dense sand/clay situation. It’s split into two distinct sections: the ‘grey desert’ and the ‘red desert’. The red part was the last part to be covered by the sea so it gets its colour from the oxidised iron where the sea’s heavy metals were deposited.

We set off to start our tour properly and the rain was really ruining our fun. Walking through the grey desert was honestly just straight pain & misery. A girl on the tour at one point was like, ‘we paid actual money to do this’, and I fully heard her sentiment. I had to stop myself from violently crashing out when I slipped and fell, soaking my entire bottom half – it was rough let me tell you.

Exhausted and feeling a little miserable, we broke for lunch and the rain finally stopped. We headed for a walk afterwards and got to see baby alligators in the swamp. The tour guide kept looking for the Mummy Alligator but I was very happy to let my girl rest. At this point, we headed to the red desert. As the formations are made of that clay/sand, you can’t walk on them straight after heavy rain to avoid destroying them, so we walked around it. It was annoying but still incredible to see from the sidelines. It’s crazy to think that it’s all natural as it looks like someone has painstakingly carved each section out – it literally looked how I imagine Mars.

We got a drink and watched the sunset. At this point, I finally dared to ask the question I’d been thinking of all day, and the whole reason I came on this trip to the desert in the first place – ‘do you think we’ll get to go stargazing?’. The guide looked at the skies and said, ‘I think so, it looks pretty clear’. At that point, I finally looked up and found maybe one or two clouds in the sky. I said a silent thanks to the universe for coming through yet again, and we made our way to the Astronomical Site.

We paid our 10k pesos, (approx. £7), and headed to the astro to lie down and stare up. I cannot express how magical it was to just look up and see all the twinkling stars out in the open like that. I was grinning the whole time whilst they talked us through the different constellations. We saw the brightest star in the sky, the zodiac constellations, the big dipper, canis majoris, and so many more. There were 5 telescopes pointed at different things in space – I can’t remember exactly what they were but I can tell you that I looked through each one at least twice and said, ‘omg WOW’, every time.

The start of the day began in hell and horror and ended in magic. We arrived back to the hostel, ordered a fat pizza, chatted and headed to bed – all of us exhausted from our arrival journeys and the general rollercoaster of a day.

Neiva was the only place in Colombia where I felt a little uncomfortable. There’s absolutely nothing to do in Neiva anyways, aside from this trip, so I would get in, get on and get out. You can do exactly that by getting the night bus into Neiva, doing the desert trip and either leaving that same night if you have the stamina or heading out first thing the next morning. I booked everything with Backpackers & Travelers Hostel. My bed for the night, breakfast in the morning and the Tatacoa Desert tour which included transport, lunch and a drink came to 200k pesos or ~£37.

It’s crazy how something so simple as lying on the ground and looking at the sky can be so incredible but it’s an experience we don’t really get living busy lives in busy cities. It feels like an almost insignificant part of the trip but it’s definitely a core memory for me now.