Santa Marta and surrounding area

Hola!
Right now I´m in Bogota.. I´ve been procrastinating on getting a second post up, so hopefully I can remember all the great things I´ve done so far!

I spent about 10 days in Santa Marta and the surrounding area before coming back to Cartagena for a night and then flying to Bogota. Santa Marta is the oldest colonial city in Colombia, but isn´t really that magnificent to look at. Luckily it´s close to some really fantastic beaches! I spent almost every day exploring a new beach, including spending 3 days in Tayrona Park.

Tayrona Park is a national park that the Lonely Planet guide to South America describes as having, ¨supernatural beauty.¨ I would have to agree with that statement. I arrived at the main Beach, playa del Cabo, by boat (craziest boat ride of my life.. the girl next to me even threw up) and was immediately awestruck. The beach is lined with palm trees and the white sand contrasts beautifully with the turquoise water. The different beaches were separated by areas with large boulders that were apparently once worshipped by the Tayrona people. I spent the next three days exploring the area a little bit, but mainly just relaxing on the beaches. At night everyone drank and chilled out by the beach while people played music. I slept in a hammock that was set up under a roof with a ton of other people, and even though I was pretty cold and it was loud, I was tired enough to sleep fairly well each night.

I left Tayrona by hiking to Pueblito, a town that was once inhabited by the Tayrona people. Now there are just remnants of the city left, and I didn´t think it was that spectacular. What was cool was the hike to get there, and the hike I took from Pueblito to the road to catch a bus. All together I spent about 4.5 hours hiking up the mountain in the jungle. It was hard work, but soooo beautiful. I also had good company as I went with a couple of nice French engineers I met the night before.

When I wasn´t in Parque Tayrona, I stayed at a hostel in Santa Marta called Noctambulo. The owners are an awesome French couple that were really helpful in telling people where the best beaches and waterfalls were. Noctambulo was super chill, and I met a lot of great people there. I also went out on the town quite a bit and got to dance a lot! I went to the neighbouring town, Taganga a couple of times to party at night. Taganga was just a simple fishing village until a few years ago when it became a backpacker magnet. It´s very beautiful there and I had a lot of fun dancing on a hotel terrace under the moonlight, and then chilling on the beach afterwards.

After spending all that time in Santa Marta, I took a bus back to Cartagena for one night, so that I could get a cheap flight from there to Bogota. My last night in Cartagena was really fun... I hung out with a couple of Canadians; we drank rum on the wall and just acted silly. We somehow met a bunch of random locals and brought them all to our hostel after! Good times.

There are a lot of things I´ve omitted from this blog because blogging takes way too much time!!! Also, blogger.com sucks... sorry for all the poor text and picture formatting. I might look for a better way of doing this that´s less frustrating. But anyway, I´ll end this post with some final summarizing thoughts on my experiences so far.

Colombia is run by this organized chaos that makes life really interesting! I´ve been on a bunch of crazy bus and pick-up truck rides, and have enjoyed getting lost in busy street markets. I meet really nice people everywhere I go, and all my worries about travelling alone have disappeared. I haven´t had any problems in terms of safety, but that´s because I´m smart. I never go out alone after the sun sets, even if there are a lot of people on the streets, and I don´t go around flaunting my money. I´ve heard stories of people having problems (like, their bag was stolen on the bus or they were mugged late at night on the street), but all of these stories seem to start with the person not being careful.

In fact, Colombia is such an up and coming country that a lot of foreigners are coming here to start businesses. A few years back was the probably the best time to start a business cheaply and have it take off, but it´s still not a bad time now. I heard from many of the entrepreneurs on the coast that it´s hard to find Colombian workers because people will work for 2 months and then quit to enjoy the fruits of their labour. After training the person and investing money in all the government paperwork involved in hiring them, I can understand why that would be really frustrating. I think it´s different in Bogota, and probably many other places in Colombia. But people on the coast are just a bit too relaxed!

Anyway, I´m going to go put on some more layers (Bogota is cold!) and socialize with my hostel friends. I hope my blog posts aren´t too boring!

:)