Colombia – Santa Marta

Santa Marta is another lovely seaside town north of Cartegena. We headed there from Santa Marta on the bus which lasted 5 hours and cost us 25,000 each. The bus went from the main bus station at 8.45 (which is surprisingly far away from the old city and will cost about 20,000)

We arrived at our wonderful apartment at 14.30 and the host greeted us with beers. We were lucky to have arrived at that time because within 30 mins of arriving, the heaven’s opened up and flooded the streets as well as our apartment. You should have seen us, mopping it up with towels, mop and bucket. We definitely earned that first night’s sleep.

When the rain had stopped and the streets had cleared a bit, we went out for food. We found a lovely place called Lamart which had amazing food. We had this local dish called Ceyeye which was to die for, pesto quesadillas, an octopus thing as well as ceviche, which is a prawn and fish cocktail with a vinegar dressing. These were 2 for 1 and also the Mojitos were 2 for 1 before 9 p.m., so we really had a good time. I finished with a passionfruit creme brulee.

We started late the next day due to a late night but when we finally got up, we went to Taganga to look around and organise a tour for the next day. It’s a small little fishing town just outside of Santa Marta. It’s a really sweet town with local fishermen bringing in the catch and selling it on the beach.

We organised our tour for the next day and then headed back to Santa Marta for the sunset. You can buy beers along the water front for 2,500 so we grabbed a beer and watched the sun set over the water.

Of course we finished our night again at Lamart and this time we had some good street entertainment.

Tayrona National park

We arrived at Taganga at 10.30 to take the very expensive boat to Cabo San Juan (40,000 each one way). The trip there took about an hour but it was extremely rough. We got completely drenched and some of the kids who sat near me were really feeling sick and afraid. It was that rough that one of my friends decided not to take the boat back and chose to hike two hours to get the bus.

 

The beach was amazing though. The water was so clear and cool that it was worth it. There was a horrible 42,000 entrance fee because it is a national park; I still can’t decide if it was worth the amount we payed.

Two of my friends only had two hours on the beach because they had to start hiking back but my friend and I had until 4 p.m. to enjoy ourselves. There was even some commotion on the beach at one point when people found a large Iguana. We left the beach at 4 p.m. but this time the journey was a lot smoother. We had so many people in the boat (too many really) that the boat sat a lot lower in the water so there weren’t many bumps. We joined our friends back in Santa Marta and went to ‘Crabs’, a rock bar, for drinks (not a seafood restaurant as we first thought). The place was great with old style rock playing.

Santa Marta was amazing just like Cartegena but different. I loved both of these cities for many different reasons.