In the seven days it took to arrive from Bogotá I spent about 22 hours on buses and progressed about 900 kilometres (depending on your source) to Santa Marta. (This doesn’t include my side trip to Villa de Leiva.) Being on holidays, I chose to use my calculator, rather than my brain, to work out that the bus trips are averaging 41 kilometres an hour, which isn’t really surprising. My grandma used to say that it’s better to arrive late than dead on time, and I would like to think that the bus drivers here must have the same motto. I don’t have much confidence in the overtaking techniques (pass when you can’t see around the bend ahead, but expect that an oncoming driver will yield, ignore double lines) but so far I have only seen two accidents so I suppose and hope the system works.
I stopped at Tunja for a while, and stayed in a lovely colonial period hotel. I visited the Casa del Fundador Suárez Rendón, the mansion of a Spanish Conquistador. The garden was quite nice but the house itself was closed because the guide was not there, so I could only look at the balcony, which was a bit disappointing. One thing I liked about Tunja was that it is on a hill, with the main plaza at the top, so it was quite easy to orientate myself. That is not something I can say often.
For me the main attraction of Tunja is its proximity to Ville de Lieva, a beautiful town. It is listed as a national monument, so it has retained its colonial style buildings and cobbled streets. It is a lovely, peaceful place, although busy with Bogotonians on weekends, and the plaza is quite striking. I visited a palaeontology museum which appeared to be the front room of someone’s home. It was quite interesting, well signed, and led to a lovely garden courtyard with a (slightly lame) miniature model dinosaur display, and a real cat and duck (both alive) thrown into the bargain.
I next stopped at the friendly town of San Gil, where there are lots of sports activities such as white water rafting and caving on offer. The most adventurous I got was visiting the Pozo Azul, which is a popular swimming and recreation spot. It is a nice area to swim, relax, read, have a beer and more, as the brochure suggested. From what I could see, “and more” meant bring a pot and cook your lunch over a fire, which some people did. There were the usual stalls if you didn’t want to BYO. The streets in San Gil are so steep that at one point I was worried my taxi would tip backwards as we went up a hill, with my suitcase in the back. On the plus side, on the way down, you don’t need to turn the engine on until you’re halfway there.
When I left San Gil I went as far as San Alberto; it was already dark when I arrived, it had taken almost all day because the road was so poor. So I arrived in a town that was on my map but not listed in my guide book, meaning I had no hotel in mind or even a city map to use. I asked the bus driver if he could recommend a hotel, and in what seems to be a typically helpful Colombian style, he quickly asked a local colleague, who hailed a taxi and before I knew it I was on my way to a hotel, in the back of a motorcycle taxi (a motorcycle with a two-seater bench attached at the back, with a cover over the top). This would have been a tight squeeze for me considering I have a big suitcase and a small daypack, but it was even tighter because there was already another passenger in the taxi. Followeing instructions, I got in, putting my backpack on the ledge behind me where the speakers were, and the taxi driver put my bag on my knees. Luckily we were only going around the corner. (I could easily have walked if the bus station guy had told me where it was) The other passenger, a young woman, was very good natured about this imposition, and the driver made a joke about the weight of my 23 kg suitcase. 50 cents later I was at my hotel, very modern and nice for a city that is not overly familiar with tourists, particularly foreign ones.
Later, as I walked along the street, I could tell I was off the gringo trail; I could see people looking at me even more than usual and some people waited until I had passed to call out to me, or ask me where I was from. San Alberto was friendly and I liked the feel of the town, and again I was appreciative of the helpfulness of the people.
With the state of the road between San Gil and San Alberta that I had seen the day before, I was not surprised that the next day, the bus from the south arrived an hour and a half late. This meant that I also arrived in Santa Marta in the dark. I don’t mean to harp on about the darkness issue; it’s just that it’s easier and safer to arrive in places in the daylight, which is the only reason I had stopped in San Alberto.
In Santa Marta, Colombia’s third largest Caribbean port, I had no problems getting a taxi or hotel, even though it was dark. My hotel was near the port, and although it’s not a nice swimming beach it is a nice area to walk around, with stalls selling handicrafts or snacks on the esplanade and restaurants and bars across the road. Whilst the esplanade is attractive and clean, I can’t say the same for the water or streets nearby. The piles of rubbish lying in the gutters and blowing around in the strong summer winds detracted from the charm. Marshall from a local diving agency told me that the government has tried hard in recent years to restore old buildings and clean up the rubbish. There is still a lot of work to go on the rubbish front, but the plaza and park are very nice spaces to relax in. I look forward to exploring Santa Marta when I return from the Ciudad Perdido (The Lost City) – and by the way – I’m in the Caribbean – where is Johnny Depp?
