Up the Caribbean Coast — The road liss traveled

After three nights in Cartagena I took a bus to a town called Santa Marta, a few hours away. The bus ride was a little interesting, as some villagers had set up a roadblock on the highway, not allowing anyone to pass. Most cars seeing this just simply turned around to go back another way. Our driver wanted to do the same, but the guy we had picked up very recently, who presumably lives nearby, argued very passionately against turning around, so we waited. After 20 minutes a police car showed up, and after another 30 minutes they finally opened up the road. I have no idea what the issue was about, or why the police didn’t just make them remove the roadblock immediately, but that’s Columbia for ya. Onwards!

going uphill on a bicycle: no problem, hitch a ride!

When we got to Santa Marta the bus didn’t even go into the city the center for some reason and I had to catch a taxi from the outskirts of town to a beach village called Taganga, where I’d stay and do some scuba diving. I booked a hostel this time, one that had a pool, but I was slightly dismayed to find that the hostel was basically all Israeli guys. I have nothing against Israelis individually, but as a group they are just so cliquey – and it’s not for lack of English either! Anywho, I had enough time to walk around the small town, set up some diving the next morning, and get a couple of photos before the sun went down. You can get around the whole place in half an hour! The town itself was a bit shabby, most of the side roads were a jumble of stones, dirt, and broken concrete, although some very nice houses sat on the fringes, perched up in the hills overlooking the bay. And the bay was very picturesque, with sun setting right down the middle of it over the ocean.

The next morning was Scuba time! I hadn’t dived in almost a year, so it was nice to get back under water. It’s low season, so most small outfitters only have a handful of clients, so we’d all take the same boat out together. The diving is in a natural park called Tayrona, which you need a permit to dive in, but the one island off the coast is permit-free, so that’s where we headed. The water was so warm that no wetsuit would be needed! The diving was pretty good, better than I expected. The visibility wasn’t great, but there was lots of sea life, tons of moray eels, shrimp, sea spiders, sea caterpillars, lobsters, pufferfish, trumpetfish, stonefish, etc. So it was well worth the $50 for two dives!

Besides the diving, there really isn’t a whole lot to do in town. The beach isn’t the nicest, but it’s somewhat interesting watching the fishermen come in with their daily catch. And I did like all the juice stands around, where there are lots of fruits I have never even heard of! Fruits named zapote, lulo, borajo, tomate de arbol, guanabana, etc. So it’s kind of fun to be able to try all these fruits for the first time! Columbia is blessed with tons of biodiversity, and this is only scratching the surface of what’s available throughout the country.

I still don’t know what half of these are

One odd thing about this little town, it’s got some great restaurants! You would expect a little town like this to have mostly basic, no frills Columbian fare, but they have some amazing places to eat! I had a 3 course meal at one place – beef carpaccio, thai yellow curry w/seafood, and a berry marmalade topped with cookie crumbs and ice cream – for $13! And then at a different restaurant had an appetizer of melon wrapped in prosciutto and a medium rare steak served with ratatouille, potatoes au gratin, and a piece of bread topped with a pumpkin whip. This was $12! Awesome. And then fish, veggies, and couscous in white wine sauce, which was probably the least exciting of the three, but the only one I took a photo of.

I also took a trip out the beaches at Tayrona national park. You can either take a bus to entrance and hike two hours in, our take the speed boat. I opted for the speed boat. The main beach, Cabo San Juan, is actually two beaches with a thatched viewing tower built in between them. It’s got hammocks and tents to sleep in, and a restaurant. The rest of the park is pretty much untouched, with beaches you have to hike to through the jungle. It’s a very scenic place! The main beach gets a little bit crowded, but you can walk thirty minutes and find a new beach that will have very little people. You just have to be careful to make sure that swimming is allowed, because some of the beaches aren’t protected and have strong currents!

the dual beach view from the tower, before the rain rolled in

Now unfortunately I had bought Colombian sunscreen, (Seriously I can’t stand paying like $13 for a bottle of American sunscreen!) which I soon realized on the boat over, did not work too well. SPF 50, yeah right. So I was content to lay in the shade of the trees, only hopping in for a quick dip with my SPF Zero sunscreen. What I did not realize was the shade, was not full shade! So I ended up frying pretty good in the ‘shade’. I was considering staying more than one night, but opted out after lobsterfying myself. I always have to have one good sunburn each trip, sigh. Also it’s kind of boring laying on the beach ALL day. But the scenery was indeed fantastic and I got some nice dawn and dusk photos. Back to Taganga for one more day of diving in the morning and football in the afternoon!

One more thing that’s nice about Taganga, it’s got NFL games! The bar that I went to on Sunday to watch the games even had NFL Redzone, which is a first! And I got to watch the Bears choke and the Pack beat the Chiefs. Plus the World Series game 5. Good stuff. After this I’ll spend one night in the hilltops and then start working my way towards the adventure capital of Colombia, San Gil.

I don’t have much time to write about the two nights I spent in the hilltop/coffee plantation region near Santa Marta called Minca, but here’s some photos.