The one where Ash gets bitten by a dog…

After the lost city trek, we returned to Minca as planned, and back to Mundo Nuevo - the lovely mountain-top hostel. We spent a few days soaking our tired muscles in the pool, and relaxing in the grounds. We decided that as we liked Minca so much, we would stay a bit longer, and we found a lovely Airbnb cabin on the river close to town. 

We left the Mundo Nuevo hostel, and checked into our Airbnb which was really lovely - we had no neighbours so it was peaceful and quiet, but just a 10 minute walk into Minca town. The cabin had parking, so we collected our bikes from the parking attendants living room where he’d been looking after them for us. Luckily the track the cabin was no where near as difficult to traverse as the one up to the hostel! 

The only thing missing from the cabin was a filter for drinking water (the tap water in most of Colombia isn’t safe to drink), so with it being nearly dark, Ash jumped on his bike to pop to town for some bottled water. 
When nearly an hour went by, and Ash hadn’t returned I started to get worried. He had left his phone at home, so I had no way to contact him. He finally returned and told me he had been bitten by a dog. He was riding his bike up the dirt track to town and out of nowhere a dog ran at him, bit his leg and wouldn’t let go! Ash managed to keep control of the bike, speed up and shake the dog off (whilst navigating the rough dirty track terrain - I have no idea how he managed to not fall off!). He carried on riding to town and managed to ask for help using Spanish and hand signals. A local took him to the health clinic on the back of his bike, and they cleaned up the wound. He then returned back to the Airbnb. 

On seeing how bad the wound was I was very worried. Ash was in pain, but he was mostly upset about the dog and worried he might have hurt it when he kicked it off him. We weren’t sure if the dog belonged to someone or was a stray, and we knew that there is a risk of rabies in Colombia, especially in rural areas where dogs aren’t vaccinated. Given that the prognosis if you catch rabies is 100% death, we weren’t willing to risk it, and decided to go to the hospital the next day. Luckily, before we left the UK we had decided to have the rabies vaccination (as we knew there was a high risk of dog bites in South America!), and this meant we had more time to get the rabies shot, and that Ash would likely need fewer shots than if he was unvaccinated. 
We managed to find a private hospital in nearby Santa Marta who could help us, so the next morning we set off for the clinic on the bikes. We were both nervous riding up the track in case we saw the same dog, but luckily there was no sign of him/her, and we made it to the clinic in 40 minutes. Once at the clinic we registered and waited an hour or so to see the doctor. Though we chosen the most expensive and (supposedly) best private hospital in Santa Marta, we really weren’t impressed with it - the clinic was dirty, and I had to tell the doctor what the current World Health Organisatoon guidelines were around possible rabies infection, and tell them what treatment we wanted!
Once they had agreed to give Ash the rabies shots, we had to wait for them to arrive - Ash needed a live rabies shot which is stored in a central facility by the government, and we had to wait for the shot to be delivered. Actually we ended up waiting for another 4 hours or so for the shot, which was annoying.  Eventually it arrived, and Ash was given a shot in the arm, and then several vials of the live vaccination were injected directly into the bite wound site - with a huge needle and without anaesthetic! It was truly horrible to watch, I’ve never seen Ash in some much pain. They then cleaned up the wound and told us to keep it uncovered but clean. We were to return 3 more times over the next 7 days for more shots (luckily just in the arm!). We paid privately and the bill was only about £30, but we left feeling incredibly grateful for the NHS and standard of health care in the UK. 

Over the next week or so, we had to return to the clinic three times for rabies shots. Ash’s leg was in quite a bit of pain, and as it had to be left uncovered and unstitched to reduce the chance of infection, the bite wound weeped a lot, and the deepest wound looked like it would never heal over! We kept it clean and didn’t really do much for a few days because even walking caused the wounds to bleed! We mostly chilled out in the Airbnb, and Ash enjoyed cooking our meals in the kitchen. We walked into town a few times, and Ash actually saw the dog that bit him looking for food in a field. She definitely looked like a stray so we were glad to have insisted on the rabies shots. We both felt upset and sad for her, as we have for lots of dogs we have encountered on our travels. That being said, we also didn’t hang around too long in case she decided to have another go at Ash! 

After four days in the Airbnb we decided to move on further round the coastline, but not too far away as Ash had one more shot to get at the Santa Marta hospital. We were feeling a bit despondent after what had happened, and also keen to keep on moving and exploring (we had enough of relaxing!). We decided to book a hostel in our next location: the Tayrona National Park.
Ash’s leg is healed now and much better (picture is 2 months later), we think he will always have a small scar, but overall he was very lucky not to have been more hurt.