Blogs from Santa Marta, Colombia, South America - page 26

Carnival is tomorrow, I'm sure I'll have a number of madcap stories to tell you after. Us teachers are planning some costumes that would be stunningly unPC and any pictures will pretty much prevent me ever seeking public office, but here it’s all good, in the spirit. Carnival is hedonism, debauchery, and self indulgence. I do my best to avoid all three on a normal basis, but Carnivale brings out the worst in me. Like rollar hockey. I've watched several movies since I've been on break. Dr. Zhivago is excellent, and the actress who plays the lead is beautiful. Being an actor really is like being immortal, since I imagine this lady is probably pretty old by now and not so beautiful, except maybe on the inside and who cares about that? This theory also justifies ... read more

Happy Festivus! The nice thing about not celebrating Thanksgiving is that you can start playing Christmas music earlier without the stigma that often accompanies pre-TG festive music in the States. Things I wanted for Christmas that I totally got. 1. A chance to meet Miss Colombia. 2. A pumpkin pie. The man who hit Stephen King with a minivan died of an "accidental overdose" a year after hitting him. Lesson to be learned, don’t hit spooky horror writers. Speaking of Stephen King, the movie 1408 based on one of his stories is excellent and one of the scarier movies I’ve seen in a long time. Oh, and I have a man-crush on John Cusack. If I was in charge in of Homeland Security I’d just go to a Royals game and anyone who was rooting for ... read more

Attention, ceux qui ne veulent pas être dégoûtés après avoir galèré dans les transports dans le froid Parisien par exemple, ne lisez pas ce message, et surtout ne regardez pas les photos, ça va vous énerver ! Alors, je vais essayé d être bref car c’est assez court vous allez voir : je vous avais parlé des grillades poissons sur la plage, déjà très très bien... et bien les deux jours suivants, nous étions tout simplement au Paradis dans le Parc national de Tayrona avec la foret tropicale et les plages FA BU LEUSES !!!! Voila, rien d’autre à ajouter, c était Génial ! Rien que pour cela ça vaut la peine de venir en Colombie...... read more

After a slow start Darragh, Sharyn and I made it to the bus station and onto a bus that was apparantly going directly to Santa Marta, about 4 hours north of Cartagena. It didn't take long for all of us to get comfortable and enjoy the chance to do nothing for 4 hours on the bus. Only a couple of hours later though we pull into a large town and were told bluntly to get off the bus and change to another smaller one......yes just another instance where they tell gringos whatever they want to hear. Again after a bus ride that took longer than expected we arrived in the bustling town of Santa Marta. Santa Marta is a large industrial port town with not a lot of interest for us so we jumped straight into ... read more

Howdy everyone! I am in Taganga right now, it is a small town outside of Santa Marta at the northern tips of Columbia. I figure I should do a short update, since I haven´t updated for a long time... well, a lot of things have happened, I would love to feed you on every single little one of them, but it would take me days to put it into writing. I promise though that at a later date I will do a detailed update..... as the Internet here is actually rather expensive. My rough itinerary is to head to Ecuador next after Columbia and then start my Amazon river travel to Brazil...then settle down for a bit in Brazil (I am really tired of dragging my 30 kg luggage everywhere I go...especially when I am looking ... read more