La Riviera Santa Marta

... de Taganga near Santa Marta to the mouth of the Río Piedras, 35km to the east. After an hour on a bus we were dropped off at the park entrance. This was followed by a long 2 hour walk through the jungle in savage heat. We stayed in a place called Cabo San Juan Del Guia. The scenery was unreal and had to be seen to be believed. We spent two days here relaxing on the beach/swimming in the Caribbean. The first night after finishing off our bottle of Rum and staying up around 4 ...

... Colombians so it was fairly busy. As there was a lot of construction work going on in the area, it was a bit smelly & dirty at times. The hostel itself was only ok, it cost 8,000 (3 Eur) pesos per night, we got what we paid for. There were no air conditioning or fans and because of this it was like waking up in a Sauna. Brian was "pumping ...

... so hot my Ambien almost did not work.<br><br>The next day, Kiwi and I went for a walk through a market. They still hang out large pieces of meat with no ice. Same with the fish. See the pictures. After the walk, we found some food and I needed to take a nap. That did not happen. I jut laid there and sweated. About 5:00pm Josephine showed up and the 3 of us went out for a while and hung out. There is not much to do in Santa Marta. <br><br>At 10:00am we said good-bye to Kiwi, and ...

... Medellin ;)) te isli van (u dva mjesta gdje se moze izaci). Oba kafica su se zatvorila u 3h tako da smo bili jos neko vrijeme u hostelu od Iraca jer su oni imali klimu u sobu te otisli spavati oko 5h. Drugi dan smo se Kets i ja zaputili u Cartagenu te tamo stigli oko 8 navecer. Kets je isao van, al sam ja bila preumorna za bilo sta tako da sam otisla spavati (u klimatiziranu sobu gdje sam se smrzla :D).

HE SAID:<br><br>Just a few days prior to our trip, we were looking at slides that my mother sent me of beautiful places in the world. To my surprise, many of the places I couldn't recognize. There was one picture of tall building on a thin strip of land that I was especially curious about where it was. I didn't know that I would see that exact same picture out the window of the airplane. It was Cartagena. That was coincidence #1.<br><br>#2 was Stacy mentioning that she ...

... to collect us about 5pm. He took his van into the park as far as we could go, nearby there were some stables where you could take a horse to one or more of the beaches. I didn&#8217;t investigate the costs.<br><br>As it turned out Jose had decided he had nothing better to do and would join us. That way he could show us all the main places of interest and would have a better idea of the routes and time we could spend at each spot. In all we visited 4 beach ...

... surprise or two. The family of five decided enough was enough and got off the bus here. It was just a twenty minutes more to Santa Marta so they opted for a taxi for the final stretch, this was too our benefit as we could now spread out. Our stop was just a little further from Santa Marta, to a place called Taganga, a small fishing village barely 10 minutes more along a road that cuts through a mountain. On descending into Taganga, there were good views of the village and the ...

... a staircase of rocks up a mountain. <br><br>After Pueblito, we headed another hour to Playa Brava, which was just as, if not more difficult of a walk up another mountain and down to the beach again. When we arrived at Playa Brava, we were greeted and told to relax until our hammocks were ready. We ran straight to the water, where we immediately changed into suits and jumped in. This beach had many waves which rolled in one right ...

... got as far as Rodadero, which is only a few minutes from Santa Marta. They stopped there to get some cash and have some lunch, and a big fight ensued. It was all in French, but the gist of it was that some people wanted to go directly to Tayrona, and some people wanted to wait till the next day. Those wanting to wait won, and we left them there.<br><br>We ended up going to a very dodgy ...

<br>The following morning a local man turned up and asked us if we would like to learn how cocaine is made. Hmm. There was a honeymooning Colombian couple in our group (that´s another story) who were horrified, quite understandably, but the rest of us had to find out. In this case curiosity could indeed kill the cat as the man was incredibly fidgety, wouldn´t let us take photos of him and told us to say that he worked ...