Santa Marta and Taganga

Warning: This blog is about me doing nothing for a couple of days on the Colombian Carribean.

After a pretty tiring 18 hour drive from Bogota, we arrived in Santa Marta to be greeted by heat and humidity. With the temperature in the mid 30s, and humidity pretty high, the dusty city of Santa Marta was a bit of a shock after coming from Bogota, in the mountains, and off the air conditioned bus. At least it wasn´t as bad as a story I heard from a man who had been to Venezuela, who said that he had woken up one morning on the bus to find ice on his glasses - I suppose wasting fuel to cool the bus down when petrol is almost free is no biggy. I had caught the bus with Karina and Dylan, who were an all round good time. We caught a taxi into the centre of Santa Marta, and I quickly went and got some food and a beer to try and cool down a little bit, before hitting the ATM to get enough money for the next few days in Taganga. Catching up again near the Plaza we caught another taxi to Taganga, a little town of around 5000 people 5km to the north east of Santa Marta over a couple of ridges.

Taganga is nestled into a little bay, with large hills surrounding it - which makes it pretty hot, even compared to Santa Marta. The three of us found a place to stay, and after dropping our bags Dylan and I waited a while for Karina before we went down to the beach. After driving through the hot and wet north part of Colombia I was pretty surprised when I came to Taganga to find it hot and dry, with only a couple of palm trees along the beach, with the surround hills the brown colour of the native shrubs and grasses. I asked later what was going on, thinking that our bus driver might have taken us to the pacific instead, but apparently it is just a ´dry carribean´climate. The beach was a little pebbly, with none of that white sand that you might have been imagining, but the water was beautiful, warm and clear nevertheless. We swam for a little bit, lazed a little more and eventually found dinner at a place opposite the soccer pitch, where I had a pretty rico whole fish, keeping in touch with the whole ´carribean´theme. That evening we had a few beers around the table tennis table before hitting the hay.

The next day was even more lazy, the family meal deal of a sleep in, before watching a Euro 2008 game in the heat of the day before Karina and Dylan and I hired a boat to take us around to Playa Grande, a little bay a couple of dollars north of Taganga. We swam for a while, though it quickly became apparent that the sea smelt like sewerage, so we didn´t stay too long. However, while we had been splashing about someone had knicked Dylan´s sneakers from the beach, and later when we returned to our stuff I found that they had thankfully left my small wad of money. Dylan and I, shoeless, ran up some stairs and back along the path towards Taganga, hoping to bump into a couple of kids with oversized sneakers in the process, but unfortunately we didn´t have any such luck. That evening I caught a collectivo over to Santa Marta to get some more money from the ATM before I came back to Taganga and organised some Scuba diving for the next couple of days.

That evening, after a couple of beers at the front of our hostel with Anna, Emma, Hazel and Andy, all from the UK we went out to the only bar open in town. It is called the Garage bar, and apparently its only open on Wednesdays and weekends, so we decided to make full use of it. After walking through the bar area we came to a large open air courtyard with a thatch roofed circular dance floor on one side. There were a lot of foreigners sitting around tables drinking, but I headed straight for the dance floor to show my stuff. We danced for 3 and a half hours to a wild assortment of music before they turned it off. Thinking that we may as well make the best of this opportunity Dylan and Karina and I headed down to the beach where we went for a swim, encouraging lots of other people, lazily sitting on the beach, to join us. We recruited a couple but it soon got cold, so we went back to the hostel.

At 7am I woke up, naturally very unchirpily, to go scuba diving. Taganga is a very popular scuba destination, and has quite a few different companies that offer courses and what they call ´fun dives´. I had got some quotes the previous day, and the previous night I had organised 2 days of diving. The company I went for in the end wasn´t the cheapest, but wasn´t the most expensive either. What really made the difference for me was the impression I got off the owner, a guy from Belgium who has recently started up his own company after working for another as a dive master for 4 years. The previous day he had been happy to show me his equipment, all of which he bought new a couple of months ago. I organised the size of my wetsuit and water booties pretty fast before downing a few cups of coffee - the colombian stuff is very addictive. Because I hadn´t dived in over a year and also because I´m not very experienced, Johann (the Belgian) and I decided that I would follow along with a couple of his students who he was taking for part of the Open Water course. Once we had got into the boat we sped along, the boat jumping over waves until we settled at a point just off the coast. We would be diving in the Parque Nacional Tayrona, a protected part of the coast which is now also a major tourist attraction for its palm trees and white sand beaches - but thats on the other end of the park far from Taganga. The locals still fish in the waters even though its a national park, but the small number of fish that they catch in their wooden boats and with the nets that they haul in from the beach don´t contribute towards overfishing nearly as much as the much larger commercial operations. It felt really good to be back in the water diving, and everything that I had been taught a year ago came back pretty fast, especially the hand signals that I use in my day to day life. The water temperature was 26 degrees, a lot warmer than the 18 of South Eastern Australia, and it was excellent to see the tropical fish, but even more so the corals, which were rather exotic. We stopped for lunch on a beach before getting back in the boat for the second dive of the day. We returned to Taganga at about 1pm, and had showers and more coffee, before I headed off to eat some baguette (there was a really amazing place that served a range of delicious baguettes, which was so nice after being stuck with crappy bread for so long) and watch another Euro 2008 match. Dylan had left that morning, and there was nowhere open in town, but I still managed to spend a couple of hours hanging out with the English crew before crashing early.

I was up early again the next day for diving, and after checking out headed down once again. Today, instead of having Johann take me I went with Desi, a local dive master. It was just him, me and Diego, who had completed his open water the previous day and was looking for some fun dives. The first dive we did was pretty neat, with lots more fish and corals, and even a small little rock tunnel that was fabulous to go through. The second dive, after lunch again on a beach and a tad of snorkelling, was just as good, and I managed to see both a lobster and a turtle, which aren´t routinely seen. After a shower at the scuba store and yet more coffee I went up the road for more baguette and football, before deciding that I needed to do something with my day. It was Friday, and I was all too well aware that I´m flying out of Cartagena on Monday. I packed up my stuff, and after saying goodbye to some folk caught a collectivo to Santa Marta, which conveniently dropped me at the bus terminal. From there I had to catch a bus first to Barranquilla, a port town half way to Cartagena, before I caught another bus on to Cartagena. I slept on the way to Cartagena, and it was quite late when I arrived. Unfortunately I had to take a taxi into the centre because it was late, even though it only cost around 5 dollars. I managed to get a hostel room, but in my weary state I was easily persuaded by Jonathan and Kaela to go out for a drink. That was last night, and after having a beer (they didn´t have any water) I crashed for a very nice sleep. So far today I have eaten a little bit of food and written two travel blogs. I feel rather proud of myself, and I might even go explore the walled Spanish city of Cartagena this afternoon, which was fortified to protect it against pirate attacks - pretty neat really.

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