Santa Marta and Tayrona

   

local man

street empandas

After 5 days in Cartagena, we decided its time to move onto a different place.  We took a “4 hour”, bus ride, ended up being 6 hours (not so bad)  from Cartagena to Santa Marta, which is along Colombia's Caribbean coast.. Nice air conditioned shuttle bus (can't ask for more).  We got dropped off at the place we chose to stay beforehand but quickly realized there was nothing around, that it wasn't exactly in the center of Santa Marta.  We ended up taking a taxi to a place closer to the center of Santa Marta with more shops, restaurants, street carts, nightlife etc.  We decided to stay here for 2 nights, its more of  a lay over spot to go to the  Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona (National Park of Tayrona)

            As soon as we arrived we headed out grabbed some empandas from a street cart, where he plopped down some white plastic chairs and we ate in the street with the other locals.  We went out around 11:30pm to explore the nightlife and ended up at La Puerta(a popular bar for locals and travelers) and found a plaza along the way with lots of people outside drinking, eating, and going to the nearby clubs.

hiking to el cabo san juan

            The next day we walked around the city, not much to see here in Santa Marta, we walked along the beach and enjoyed some of the local dishes of arepas, empandas, jfruit uices, etc.  We also headed to the grocery store to prepare for our stay in the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, because there isn't many options there for food.  We bought canned tuna,  snacks, fruit, snorkeling gear, bug spray and a flashlight.  We headed back to our place to pack up a smaller pack for our 2 day stay in the park, because we were going to leave our larger packs since we had to hike to the beach and then we'd come back to Santa Marta for our packs after our trip. 

camping grounds

            Monday morning we woke up bright and early at 6:30am took a local bus about an hour to the entrance of the park paid the entrance fee of $18 each and started our hike to the beach of El Cabo San Juan, which was the best beach in the park we had read. We had heard that the hike to El Cabo would be about an hour and a half, we figured it would be a nice easy walk.  Boy were we wrong.  It took us about 2 hours to get there and it was a very very hard hike.  We were climbing huge hills, rocks, going down steep steps, sliding down dirt hills, moving out of the way of horses passing by, all in 90 degree heat carrying our belongings and food.   It definitely was not the easy walk we were expecting. 

journal writing 

Adrienne

        

Tayrona Park

 

            When we arrived we rented our “beds” (hammocks) on the beach under a hut, and headed for the beach.  We hung out here for 3 days 2 nights it was very relaxing and peaceful and the hammocks weren't too bad to sleep in.  We walked to different beaches and hung out and caught up on sleep since lights were out by 10pm.  We woke up early every morning so we got some good full days on the beach.  

Add caption

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena we have arrived!!! We got into this beautiful city on the northern coast of Colombia in the afternoon, so we found our place, threw down our packs and headed out to eat and explore.  Obviously I can't complain after the winter we had, but boy was it hot.  The humidity is really what we weren't used to, but as soon as we started walking around, we understood why everyone loves this city so much, its beautiful, people are friendly and its very clean.

top of the castle

steak

The Old City, which is where we stayed in Barrio San Diego is walled in, and surrounding the wall is the sea and an outer neighborhood called Getsamani.  So, after we arrived and had a steak, rice, plantain, salad lunch (all for about $4 USD), we walked along the wall overlooking the sea and watched the sunset.  We strolled around some more up and down the streets enjoying the amazing colors, trying some of the local food and chatting it up with some tourists and locals along the way.  Not many locals here speak English so we were excited to start practicing our Spanish.

The next few days we went to El Castillo (the castle), we ate Colombian arepas, empandas, steak, fish, watched a few sunsets, walked through the streets of Getsamani enjoying the vibrant graffiti, went to the artisanal market at Plaza de Los Bovedas and did lots of salsa dancing with locals!  We loved the salsa dancing here.  We learned that different parts of Colombia do different styles of salsa, so I'd say we have Cartagena salsa down pretty well!!

Best street food ever!

arepas

fish

Beach

streets

Our favorite salsa club was Donde Fidel.  It is in the plaza right beside the clock tower, great salsa music, and pretty much only locals go there.  The second we walked in the locals were asking us to dance.  There was no sitting down here, it was so much fun and quite the workout.  We also heard that Havana Club in Getsamani was a good salsa place.  We went on Friday night, it was so so.  Great live music, but it was too crowded, so we went to a local bar/club down the street with less people, not so many tourists and a DJ who played salsa, hip hop and reggaeton... our favorite.

local mans stand

One of the best foods that we've had so far was this family recipe that this man was selling out of a cart on the street called patagon relleno.  Adrienne swears its the greatest thing she's had... EVER! It's a fried plantain cut down the center (almost like a hot dog roll), stuffed with pulled pork, beef, many different cheeses, french fried sticks, and salsa, it was delicious and only about $1.75 USD each!!

Another day we walked about 20-25 minutes to Boca Grande also known as “Little Miami,” (many high rises along the coast)  We stayed there for 4-5 hours on the beach and had a nice relaxing day.  The beach here isn't that beautiful, its a regular looking beach, but its nice to get away from the heat for a few hours and be able to get in the refreshing Caribbean to cool down a bit.

salsa dancing