Santa Marta - The market and the (not so much) Caribbean sea
Reaching Santa Marta from Villa de Leyva was not the easiest and relaxing experience one can have. We changed 3 buses, 2 during the day and one overnight with a total travel time of nearly 24hours. The route goes through mountains with pretty high peaks and gorgeous valleys crossed by rivers. The scenery is amazing...if you survive to the bus drivers’ extravaganzas!
Santa Marta itself is not so appealing, it’s not what you expect from a place in the Caribbean sea! There is a beach but I wouldn’t recommend it. The market area though is quite interesting. The usual traffic, millions of stalls from permanent to temporary, strong odours, people shouting everywhere. Not far from this area we find a place where to have the almuerzo, it’s again one of those places that have never seen a tourist but where you are not too sure how your stomach would feel after. We know ourselves and we’ll be going in these places until we are food poisoned and then we’ll higher our standards :)
In the afternoon we take a bus ride to El Rodadero, a village close to Santa Marta which is a famous destination among Colombians and gringos for beaches and nightlife. The beach is actually not so nice and the water even worse. Sellers are everywhere, they try to sell anything from cocktails to goggles. Some of them go away easily, but others would speak to you and make you promise to buy something, like our venezuelan friends who chats with us for a while and wants us to buy a cocktail mas tarde “if someone else reaches you, you say GRACIAS and wait for me”. He checks on us every 30 mins to see if mas tarde has arrived and he is very upset when he understands we wouldn’t buy cocktails.
Back to Santa Marta we have a walk around the touristic “centre” with many western restaurants and pubs. But the target of tonight is to prepare our backpacks to hiking mode for the 2 days in Tayrona...easier said than done!
