Santa Marta
The somewhat sleepy and definitly hot Carribean coastal town of Santa Marta is one of Colombia’s top destinations for backpacking travelers. It’s popular not so much for its beauty than for its location, close to the Parque Nacional Tayrona, The Sierra Nevada and the Ciudad Perdida ("Lost City") trek, and Taganga, a quiet fishing village offering some of the cheapest diving classes in the world.
Over the course of about two weeks, in between various activities, we spent about four days in Santa Marta, and the town began to grow on us. While the days are hot, the nights bring in a welcome breeze from the sea. Also at night, people come out and dance in the streets to blaring salsa, merengue, and regatón, a very popular but mostly garbage sort of music that is to Colombia what mainstream rap (not hip hop) music is to North America.
In Santa Marta, we stayed at the legendary Hotel Miramar. I say legendary because it has been around for about forty years, growing popular among gringos and Colombians alike as a backpacker haunt, and it hasn’t changed much. Apparently, it was given four pages worth of description in a famous travel novel written by a gringo. To the surprise of visitors familiar with the book, it remains exactly as it was described there: from the building to the types of characters that fill it.
The Hotel Miramar began to win our hearts that bit faster as we discovered the "fruit man across the street" selling the best natural fruit shakes, served in children's sand pails for about one dollar. Another possibly controversial highlight is the best bar in town located just across the street, deceivingly disguised as a neighborhood corner store but boasting plastic chairs and gigantic speakers, which are carried outside onto the sidewalk at night. The dance floor is the street. What a scene!
Taganga
Taganga is about 10 minutes up the coast from Santa Marta. It was close to Taganga, on Playa Grande, which is not so “grande”, where I discovered snorkelling, an activity that had always eluded me, being a cold-water Irish boy living most of my life in a land-locked province in western Canada. I must say I was a little scared by the colorful little fishies circling around me, but once I got over that initial fear, you couldn’t get me out of the water.
Unless you’re diving, however, Taganga has little to offer. It’s just a fishing village, afterall.
Parque Nacional Tayrona
On the advise of several other travelers, we made for the Tayrona National Park, about an hour up the road from Santa Marta. It is well known for its fantastic Carribean beaches and laid back vibe. We spent about five days there, and in my memory, they have been molded into one. The time went by unnoticed. It was nice because travelling tends to bombard you with a lot of crazy experiences, which can be overwhelming and even exhausting at times(yeah, I know, there's no doubt it's easier than work... what's "work" again?)
We arrived at the Tayrona park gates and walked for an hour through a fairly dense forest. As the variety of vegetation changed, we gauged our closeness to the beach: palm trees and coconuts mean you’re close. Arriving at the beach, we walked an additional hour or so, accompanied by our guide, a big, black mastiff who loved Jess but eventually lost interest with her, along the beach. Pretty pooped out, we finally made it to El Cabo, “the cove,” a beautiful little camping area and the only safe place to swim, as a reef at the mouth of the bay breaks the strong waves.
As I said, we spent about five days in El Cabo, camping, hammocking, and cooking our own food on the beach. It was a great place to feel like you’re on vacation and at the same time spend hardly any money, something we’re starting to really run out of.
Pueblito
From El Cabo, it is posible to make a little day trip to Pueblito, an archaeological site dating back possibly 5000 years. Although it is now home to only one indigenous family, at the time of European contact and the Spanish conquest, there were 5000 Tayrona indigenous people living in Pueblito. As is the history of the Conquest, the dirty Europeans gave the poor indigenous people all sorts of terrible diseases that killed most of them off before they could have the chance to become slaves. Interestingly, the inhabitants of Pueblito subsequently launched many successful ambushes against the conquistadors.
The Tayrona people are really fascinating. Before the Spanish arrived, they had contact with both the Mayans in Central America and the Incas in the Andes. With those civilizations, they established extensive trade routes that brought them potatoes, yuca, maiz, and other goods. Basically, with the fertitlity and diversity of the area they inhabited, there was little they could not eventually grow themselves. They literally had it all.
They were so well set up agriculturally, in fact, that they began to devote more time to spirituality. Some say that there are groups of Tayrona high in the Sierra Nevada, isolated to this day in an area where ousiders have not found a way to enter. Some say the area is protected by an energy sheild, and that the group will not have contact with “us” until we’re no longer stupid, that is until we’ve reached some sort of spiritual enlightenment. Intersting stuff. Fact or fantasy, who knows?
One thing is for certain, however. No matter how profound a story may sound, there always lies the possibility that, in Colombia, it may be true. We are learning every day that the reality of Colombia is the magical, fantastic world of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, barely plausible and perpetually fascinating.
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