Blogs from Palomino, Santa Marta, Colombia, South America

Still staying in hotel Kantawa, decided to do a little ride to explore east side of the region. At first, I was supposed to go to RioHacha, explore a bit the desert and then go South to completely drive around Sierra Nevada mountain range. But I changed my mind soon after arriving in Colombia. Problem with Guajira and far East, is that the desert doe snot hold many interesting attractions for me, even after looking at some blogs and read about it. So, instead, I'll stay a couple of nights in Minca after Tayrona. The drive. Road is smooth and with not too much heavy traffic. I passed succession of banana plantations, forests, little villages and coastline. About the coastline, at one point, the road is on a cliff with many nice views, but there's no ... read more

Bogota - Armenia - Salento - Medellin - Cartagena - Santa Marta - Taganga - PNN Tayrona - Palomino - Bogota So this trip was extremely last minute, which made it fun. In total, we planned on leaving home for Colombia, and 7 days later we were there, with absolutely nothing planned. An adventure to say the least. Overall, Colombia gets a bad rap, for good reasons if you know its history, but it was a great place to be (certainly not our favourite in South Amercia) but great none-the-less. This is one of those places that you need to go through the bad to get to the good, but the good is insanely beautiful and one of a kind and certainly worth any hassle it took to get there. We started in Bogota, a typical ... read more

Blame it on my Disney land experience of Cartagena but as I made my way along the Caribbean coast toward Venezuela, I was definitely in the mood for a more remote, tourist free type of experience. Palomino, a tiny undiscovered gem along the Caribbean coast was simply perfect, pristine beach, intense agate blue sea, fishermen and breathtaking view of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain from the beach. I can only be grateful that the locals met in Santa Marta shared this tip with me…What else, well, this is still off the road for most tourists so there was barely anyone and no infrastructure as such other than hammock and a few bungalows! Life sweet life… The “getting there” part Surprisingly easy! One would expect that this type of place be a hard one to get to ... read more