Santa Marta

20-29 Dec, Santa Marta: We spent 10 days in Santa Marta Marina before sailing to Cartagena for New Year.
The first 2 days Ray and I were feverishly busy washing the boat of salt, cleaning inside, doing laundry and putting up the bimini. All in readiness for the commodore’s inspection on her arrival. And in the evenings, we wandered the very lively town sampling various drinking holes – of which there were plenty! And OMG so cheap. Our first arrival dinner was COP95,000. This sound a lot, but it’s just $18 for starter, main course, and drinks for the 2 of us in a nice restaurant. It also feels odd at the ATM too, taking out half a million pesos, which is only US$100.

The Santa Marta Marina is an IGY marina and to a pretty high standard I would say: floating docks with finger pontoons, finger-print access to facilities and good security. The only issue was the wind, which howled down from the 5500m peaks of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains just inland. Regularly peaking up to 40kts, it caused the boat to rock and mooring lines to squeak under high tension. And it also brought a lot of gritty dust which quickly covered my nice clean boat! Luckily, we had the air conditioner running, which meant we could seal the boat, keeping the dust from entering. And thank goodness for it. Now we are just 10degrees north of the equator, firmly in the tropics, with temps 27-32 degC and 80% humidity. But wonderfully cool and dry inside the boat.

Oana flew in from Romania with 2 stops: Amsterdam and Bogota, arriving 2 days after us, on 22-Dec. It took her a couple of days to climatize to the time zone, the heat, and to being back living on board. And the boat motion caused by the wind didn’t help her settle 🙁

We spent a couple of evenings in the town, which was very crowded with a surprising amount of Christmas decorations and festivities. And the Feliz Navidad song getting burnt into our brains!
For Christmas Eve we decided to treat ourselves to a special dinner in the Marriott Hotel. They said it would be a Christmas buffet with live music that continued into the early hours. But it was quite disappointing. Only about half the tables were occupied, the buffet was severely lacking, and the music was a 1-man setup, playing music fit for a funeral! Not the joyeux time we had hoped 🤨. So we were done and gone by 9:30pm. The tickets, by USA standards, were reasonable @$80 each. But by Colombian standards outrageously expensive.

The following day, Christmas Day, we rented a car for 5 days. First day we headed upwards on the only paved road that goes into the mountains. Our aim was the mountain town of Minca, at 1000m altitude. But we found it very grubby and overrun with back-packers and associated locals hawkers. So we continued onwards up the rough and winding road lined with tall bamboo, increasing jungle-like fauna and wonderfully fresh mountain air. The road was supposed to come back down to the coast but after 3 hours of driving it abruptly stopped and turned into a donkey track! Leaving us no choice but to U-turn and go back the same way, very slowly!
The next 2 days we drove the north coast road towards Venezuelan border. First stop was to be the Tairona National Park, but again it was mobbed by back-packers and associated hawkers. And the entrance fee and required purchase of medical insurance put us off. So we continued east. The road was surprisingly good quality, all very clean and the verges manicured like parkland. And the other vehicles driving surprisingly carefully. It passed through endless fields of alternative extensive banana plantations and raw jungle. And the ascending mountains always present on the landward side. Every few kilometers we would cross a large river coming down from the mountain slopes, which often had tourists tubing on them (floating down on inflated truck inner-tubes). Looked like fun.
We spent the night in the happyish-back-packer beach town of Palomino. Basically, a rough dirt road down to the beach lined with hostels and bars. We picked the best looking “hotel” which other than having a nice pool, was pretty rough. But probably luxury for the average barefooted backpacker!
The next day we returned to boat, hoping there are better parts of Colombia to visit!
At this point Oana and I declared Santa Marta “ticked and crossed”. Which is our expression for “done that, no need to return”.
Ray on the other had loved the whole experience. Especially the plentiful pretty views of a female nature! Quite the contrast to his quiet town life in Shadyside, Maryland.

On Wednesday we drove Ray to the Barranquilla airport to fly back home. 2 flights of 3 hours each get him back to where we took 10 days to sail from!
The 2-hour airport drive took us through contrasting poverty- stricken and filthy fishing villages and pristinely natural marsh land as we crossed the long national park along sandbar to Barranquilla.

It was brilliant to have Ray sail the boat here with me, and we enjoyed his company this last week in Santa Marta. But it was also nice to be back to just the two of us onboard again. We decided we should now move onto Cartagena and prepare for our motorbike tour inland.

The highlights of Santa Marta were the marina quality, the mountain scenery, and the Christmas spirit in town. But despite initial impressions of it being like a Spanish beach town, the similarity definitely ended when seeing details and grubbiness of the place. But we are glad we made the stop here to experience it.