It all worked out fine in the end! Diary of an older woman travelling solo in Colombia.

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Had a quiet and rather lazy day yesterday in Santa Marta. In the morning I went to the Quinta San Pedro which is where Simón Bolívar died in poverty and obscurity, having failed to keep the states he liberated together as a single country. I took the hotel staff's advice and went and returned by taxi - the fare of 7 thousand pesos is less than £2. Unfortunately the place was mobbed by elderly and very decrepit- looking American tourists whose guides had microphones and were competing with each other in volume. Perhaps a lot of their charges were deaf. Anyway it made me think that I had better get my travelling in quick before I was reduced to doing it their way. I found out from the taxi driver that they had come off a cruise ship. The Quinta was fine with quite nice gardens but you would need to be a Bolívar fanatic to really appreciate it. Here and throughout a lot of South America he is obviously revered as a saint, one of the monuments is named as his altar.

Managed to pre-empt the return taxi driver's attempt to overcharge me by telling him how much my outward trip cost (no meters here). Next time I will ask how much it costs before I get into the taxi- it is too late once you're inside. Anyway after that had quite an interesting talk with him; taxi drivers, provided they are over 40 are very good for practising my Spanish. Driving through the suburbs you see the poverty with some people living in shacks but at least here you don't walk past men lying in the middle of the pavement as you do in Bogotá- even the police just ignored them. Last night at dinner a boy aged about 11 walked past my table selling sweets. I said: 'No thank you I had already eaten', to which he replied: 'Yo no' (I haven't), before marching off. Who could resist that? I called him back and gave him all my loose change. (Have not attempted to master the coins here.)

Evenings are definitely the time when travelling on your own has distinct disadvantages. The taxi driver was feeling sorry for me having to sit at a table eating all on my own but I told him that I took a book. People-watching is also interesting of course. The food here is not great or rather what I have had so far of Colombian cuisine has not been very exciting. The best meal was the one for the equivalent of £2.50 in the small town outside Bogotá: fish with an interesting sauce. They seem to go in for dishes with pieces of meat and vegetables such as corn cobs or potatoes stewed and served in stock, However the cafe nearby which majors in fruit juices, mainly made from fruits I have never heard of and would love to see, does a dish with ‘arepa’ (corn pancake) which is traditional, with meat, avocado, cheese some sort of tomato salsa and not sure what else. I have now had this twice! There is a lot of Italian food around, which is fine but feels like cheating.

Came across one modest example of differential pricing for tourists. Bought water from the same shop twice for 3000 pesos (75 p,) but the third time I was handed back one thousand. Hope that is as bad as it gets. On the plus side have made several mistakes with the currency, including giving the horse guy a 20,000 note instead of one for 2000 and have been handed the excess back.

Wednesday was the day for my transfer to Cartagena which I had booked through the hotel. The minibus picks you up at your hotel in Santa Marta, does the four hour trip and then drops you off at your hotel in Cartagena. See how unadventurous I am getting but really it hardly cost more than a bus from the bus station with a taxi at either end.

Whilst waiting for the pickup had a good half hour's chat with the owner's mother which started off with a query about what was the secret of my skin! However we got onto more interesting subjects such as the hotel's history. She asked me if I knew what a motel (same word in Spanish) was. Well, obviously I did, but it turns out that a motel in Spanish, well in Colombia anyway, is a place where you rent a room for an hour or so to take your girlfriend or mistress! Apparently this one was used by ministers and other important people and there was a concealed entrance so they could slip in and out unnoticed. Furthermore when the current owners took the hotel over only a year ago they didn't just gut it, they invited in some indigenous people from the mountains (shamans?) to exorcise it of its bad spirits!! I was gob-smacked because this lady seemed so sensible and down to earth.

The minibus was extremely comfortable so was very glad hadn't had to gamble on finding one at the bus station which was definitely 'directo'. The scenery wasn't very interesting, quite flat, but along various stretches of the road there were settlements. A lot of these had brick walls with corrugated iron roofs but some looked much less sturdy with walls made out of wooden planks fastened irregularly together and patched with polythene or tarpaulin or with gaping holes. Most were alongside dirt roads. I dare say if I had been to India or somewhere like that this would look like a relatively affluent way for poor people to live.

We had a toilet stop where I had some difficulty working out what the system was. A little girl aged about 5 turned out to be ‘la jefa’ (the boss) as one of the other passengers remarked. She stopped me going into one toilet which turned out to be for ‘hombres’ only and apparently wouldn't let me into the other either until I realised you had to pay, silly me! Between people going in and out she went in to empty a bucket of water down the loo which looked like a flushing toilet but obviously wasn't. I didn’t quite catch what she said but think she was trying to charge me an exorbitant sum until her father stopped her. I was the only obvious non South American on the bus, of course.

When dropping me off at my ‘hotel’ the driver waited with me until somebody answered the bell at the gate. I had said to him: "Are you sure this is the right place?" Have a horror of being abandoned miles from anywhere, not knowing where I am. He assured me it was and that it was a very good area, in which case I wondered why they needed such high wooden railings with spikes on top all around. (Perhaps that's why the railings are made of wooden planks, railings are normally very thin metal and all houses that look at all substantial have them.) I was greeted by one of the kitchen staff who showed me my room. For the nth time I wondered how I would have managed without Spanish. What a contrast to my previous hotel. It looked in need of paint on the photos on booking.com but these hadn't captured its thrown together and falling apart character. Anyway the bed linen is clean, ' the air conditioning is very efficient and it's quiet.



Had time for a walk round Cartagena and a meal. First impressions are that we are in the Caribbean - lots of black people around, and it is very pretty, very busy, very hot and very expensive. A pizza and small glass of wine (my first since arriving) cost me the equivalent of £10 - might as well be in the UK!

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