Made the most of some hammock time for the morning before leaving Elemento on the Motos back to Minca. The journey this time was far more enjoyable given we weren’t riding in torrential rain through a thunder storm!
We stopped at this cute little cafe in Minca where they actually bake rather than fry their food and ate some tasty empanadas for lunch before the journey back to Santa Marta and on to Medellin.
The bus from Santa Marta to Medellin was to be around 15hours and was sold to us as express service with wifi. While the wifi didn’t work, the journey started out ok without a stop from 5pm until about 11pm. There was no explanation about the problem but as everyone stood on the roadside in the middle of nowhere we discovered from other passengers that our bus breaks had failed. Rather than get us a new bus, our driver decided to try fix the problem himself. A group of passengers stood around using their mobile phones as torches while our driver and some other random (possibly unqualified) mechanic types tinkered around under the bus.
We found a dirty roadside hole in the wall tienda just near where we pulled up that seemed to be open. Super seedy but stocked full of empanadas this random street stall became our sanctuary for the next few hours. We made use of their few tables and chairs for a few rounds of Yanev through til 3.15am when the bus was fixed and we could resume our journey.
There is nothing fun about long transit days and nights becoming longer but we all agreed we'd rather be stuck in the middle of nowhere than in an accident or dead.
