Santa Marta and Taganga

A quick walk around Santa Marta

I never had any special desire to visit Santa Marta, but after an intense week of Spanish classes, getting up early and trying to get used to this whole travelling thing, I figured one chilled day there before going hiking in Tayrona wouldn't hurt. It was nice not being woken up by an alarm for once, but as my hostel lacked air conditioning I didn't have much of a sleep in anyway. I figured I might as well check out the city centre instead.

My hostel didn't exactly have the best location, so the walk to the city was a long one. I almost gave up at one point, as I didn't bring a map and had a feeling I was getting lost. Then suddenly I spotted the sea and figured any road leading to the sea must be the right one. This time I was actually right. I spent about an hour checking out Parque Simon Bolivar, the Cathedral, Parque de los Novios and the malecon. Then I walked past a cute cafe, and stopped for a banana cake and a juice that looked way fancier than it tasted. After that I felt kind of done with Santa Marta.

In conclusion Santa Marta isn't really anything special. If I had to go again I would make sure I'd stay in the Centro Historico.

Simon Bolivar is a popular guy, and people were flocking around his statue.

Rodrigo Bastidas, the founder of Santa Marta.

Some cool graffiti I came across on my way back to the hostel.

A beachy afternoon in Taganga

An American guy at my hostel spoke very warmly about Taganga. As the day was still young I decided pay the little town a visit. Taganga is a small fishermans village with gravelled streets, cute, little boats and beautiful scenery. I managed to find the public bus, which took me to Taganga for 1600COP. As I walked down the beach I immediately felt relaxed. Taganga had a nice vibe.

I found a spot on the beach where I sat down and observed everyone and everything in my surroundings. Taganga had everything from backpackers to Colombian families, all of them just chilling and having a good time. On my way from the bus to my spot on the beach I had spotted a restaurant advertising its vegetarian food. I immediately decided that this would be my dinner spot for the day. When it started raining and I eventually decided to leave the beach, I sat down there and enjoyed an amazing lentil burger.

As I wanted to get back to Santa Marta before it got all dark, I then hopped on the bus back. The bus appeared to be in pain as it was forced up the steep hills back to Santa Marta. I felt kind of bad, but luckily we made it back safely.

I ended up having a really good day in Santa Marta and Taganga, but was also fine with not having more time to spend around there. The rest of the evening was spent doing a bit of travel research (I had no clue about where to spend the upcoming week) and getting ready for a couple of days in Parque Tayrona, of which I was incredibly excited.