Colombia: Santa Marta
Exploring the “touristic, cultural and historic district of Santa Marta,” Colombia’s oldest city
The Colombian city of Santa Marta — I’d never heard of it before. And yet it’s the second oldest continuously inhabited city in South America. And apparently, its official full name is “Touristic, Cultural and Historic District of Santa Marta,” which is quite a mouthful, and would make one suspect it’s worth visiting I suppose. But first, we had to get there from the Isla del Piratas (Island of Pirates) off the coast about 170 miles away.
First, we took a motorboat for ten minutes from our piratical hideout to the mainland, which we passed right through via a narrow passage through the mangroves, coming into a shallow sheltered cove on the far side of the peninsula and pulling up at the small dock to transfer our things into a car. This town (Baru) was an authentic local town of packed sand streets, crumbling walls and windows with iron bars, and houses sometimes quite prettily painted and accented with climbing bougainvilleas.
The first half hour of the drive had the ocean on our left and mangroves on our right. Then we entered and passed through the Cartagena metropolitan area and then were rolling through forested hills on a major highway. Animal crossing signs warned of anteaters, giant iguanas, coatimundis, and an animal I can’t identify, I assume chupacabra.
After about two hours we entered Barranquilla. Though less famous than Cartagena, Barranquilla is the biggest city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, and the fourth biggest city in Colombia overall. We just stopped for lunch here. Our driver took us to a food court on a boardwalk overlooking the River Magdalena. This food court was probably the nicest looking food court I’ve ever seen, beautifully decorated with hanging winged caimans and full of a wide variety of little eateries. It wasn’t crowded but there were plenty of people there, and where they came from was a bit of a mystery to me because it seemed to be located in the middle of an industrial area without foot traffic outside.
From thence it was two hours to Santa Marta, for a substantial portion of which the road was just on a narrow spit of land between the sea and a broad lagoon. The sun set behind the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range and we rolled into the coastal valley of the city itself at dusk. At a red light, a group of young men fanned out in front of the stopped cars … and began break dancing, quickly collecting money proffered through the car windows before getting out of the way as the lights turned green.
Our hotel in Santa Marta was walking distance from downtown, nondescript on the outside but with a very nice atrium in the middle with a pool. It was called Soy Local, which I invariably pronounced like “Soy Loco,” ie, “I’m crazy.”
Day 1: Playa Blanca
We met up in the morning with a local travel agent our driver was friends with. She was friendly, almost more like talking with a friend about what one wants to do than having a business transaction. We would be in Santa Marta for three days, we’d do the famous ziplines at Playa Blanca this day, the next we’d go on a boat trip to see “16 bays,” and the third we would go hiking in Tayrona National Park. I’d have really liked to go to the “Forgotten City,” some ancient ruins deep in the forest, but it would be a four-day hike and we no longer had four days to spend in Colombia. If only we had known of it earlier we could have planned around it! It’s up to you now dear reader to go there.
Our travel agent Margarita and her driver (/ boyfriend?) took us to the nearby docks (just extending out from the beach) and arranged the tickets for us. The boat took us just a few coves over to where we could see the 60 ft (18 meter) tall zipline towers on the ridge beside the cove. The ziplines extend over a kilometer across the entire cove.
After the boat deposited us we climbed the shorter tower. They put us in harnesses and hooked us to the cables, and hoisted us the kilometer out across the cove to the higher tower. There the attendants unhooked us from the cable we came in on and hooked us up to another one. We were asked if we wanted to go slow or fast and we both said fast. I’m not afraid of heights at all but I was mildly worried there’d be some mishap and I’d accidentally go while not fully strapped up or something, but of course they were very careful to ensure such a thing didn’t happen, and soon I was flying back through the fresh air across the cove, just blue sky above me and the turquoise sea under me. Unfortunately I have no photos of this experience since we had to leave our phones and such in a locker as it would be imminently unsafe to have loose objects on the zipline.
After that we swam for awhile and enjoyed some fancy drinks out of coconuts and pineapples.
We got back from this in time to go to the Gold Museum. Interestingly every city (Bogota and Cartagena before this at least) seems to have a “gold museum,” which is what they seem to call a museum featuring Pre-Columbian history, due to the abundance of beautiful golden artifacts. We hadn’t made it to the Bogota or Cartagena museums so I was eager to make it to this one. Being a history nerd I found it very interesting. Cristina commented that the Pre-Columbian history of Venezuela was very similar. There was also a lot of interesting information about the early history of Santa Marta, which goes back to 1525 — the only older continuously inhabited European settlement in South America is a town in Venezuela.
Cristina was in the mood for a “perro caliente” — a hot dog, and she had shown me many pictures of hot dogs in Venezuela which are just absolutely heaped with condiments so I was eager to see this for myself. Between where the Gold Museum was by the waterfront and our hotel there were several blocks of narrow streets full of restaurants and bars. We found just the sort of little hole-in-the-wall hot dog place we were looking for. The condiments were self serve and we heaped them on. Unfortunately my phone was dead by this point so no photo. I bought possibly the best margarita I’d had the whole trip for $2 from this little place, in fact two hot dogs, a margarita, and a mango juice came out to only $12.50 (50,000 pesos).
Day 2
Once again Margarita and her driver picked us up in the morning and took us to the dock. We boarded a catamaran and received welcome drinks, and then more welcome drinks, welcome aboard. The boat proceeded along from cove to cove as they told us a few details about each one. Presently the three or four crew members came up to the top deck and led everyone in a dance party.
And now for the geographic mystery of the day. On the coast I noticed the below tunnel that as you can see goes right into the coastal cliff. It appears big enough a vehicle could fit through but has a solid concrete barrier across the front.
Scrutinizing google maps one of my friends was able to find the other end of it, and it looks like a vehicle access ramp goes right into it. If any of you internet sleuths can figure out more about this I’d be very curious!
After the tour of the bays we ended up at another beach where we were able to do some snorkling. There were many tropical fish here as well as some kind of hokey underwater statues of for example a mermaid and a shark that looked like the one from Finding Nemo.
That evening we had some errands to run. Margarita had advised us that for the hike in Tayrona National Park Cristina would need hiking shoes, that we’d have to bring our own lunch, and that single use plastic bottles weren’t allowed so we’d have to buy reusable water bottles. So we walked into town to buy these things.
Fortunately found a shoe store with some hiking shoes for Cristina pretty quickly, I’d been worried that would be difficult. Went to a grocery store and bought sandwich fixings as well as hard plastic water bottles.
Just when we got back to the hotel the guy who would be our guide the next day texted us not to forget to bring 200,000 pesos ($50). We knew park admission would be 80,000, but why the extra 120 kilopesos? I asked him and he said “for lunch.” The lunch we were told we had to bring ourselves? When asked for further clarification he ambiguously responded: “okk” So I went back into town to hit the ATM.
Day 3: Tayona National Park
The next morning we got up early to have breakfast before heading out. The guide collected us with a charter bus full of other tourists and we headed off to the park. About an hour later as we were arriving at the park’s entrance we were told no outside food would be allowed in the park, and here we were with our backpack full of sandwiches we’d made the night before! We were all deposited at some restaurants outside the park entrance to have breakfast, but of course Cristina and I had already eaten. And the guide took everyone’s order for lunch which would be served at a restaurant in the park, and was not optional. Basically everything our travel agent had told us about what would be required for this excursion was wrong — everyone else did indeed have normal single use water bottles and one person was even carrying a case of cans of coke. (we smuggled in our sandwiches in the backpack)
The hike itself was lovely though. 16 kilometers (10 miles) round trip through jungley forest, on boardwalks and sand. Much of it parallel to the coast, with opportunity to swim at some lovely beaches. Lunch was good though we were getting tired of the grilled chicken all these places serve.
Saw some small monkeys up in the trees.
The next day our same driver that brought us to Santa Marta took us back to Cartagena. From there we flew to Bogota where we sadly had to part ways. Cristina to return to Caracas, Venezuela, and myself continuing on to the world beekeeping congress in Santiago, Chile (which I probably won’t write about here so if you’re curious you’ll have to read it on my own blog (or read my article in the American Bee Journal or the Australasian Bee Journal ;) ))
