Santa Marta - The Old and the Slightly Less Old

A few hours up the road from Cartagena is the charming little city of Santa Marta. The oldest European settlements in Colombia, it combines Spanish tradition with the laid-back Caribbean atmosphere.

Cat and I didn't actually spend much time in the city itself, instead using it as a base for trips to Minca and Tayrona National Park. If we're honest, there isn't a huge amount to do within the city. It's an uncomplicated place next to the sea with the usual small, rigid grid of streets in the old city and the more sprawling and dirty newer city around the outside. We were here in the middle of the low season, so hostels were empty and the locals more friendly than usual. It is also phenomenally hot, even for the coast.
Ancient Tayrona ceramics accurately capture my face as I leave the air conditioning
All that said, i did like this town. Despite many modernisations, it is impossible to walk some of the streets and not feel like you've somehow stepped back in time. Many of the old streets are pedestrian only, and as you walk down the red bricks among the whitewashed buildings it's almost surprising to see women walk past in t-shirts instead of petticoats.

There is also a great variety of street food in Santa Marta. Restaurants were few and far between and quite expensive, but if you need a fresh iced lemonade to cool off, an empanada or fruit salad to snack on, or a fish plate to fill you up, you are never far away from a stall that can help you out. If you're squeezing that backpacker budget, the cheap, fresh produce around town will make a banger of a hostel dinner.

The one huge piece of advice I can give: stay in the old city! I have met a lot of people who have hated Santa Marta, and it was only when I asked where they stayed that I realised they only saw the rough, grubby suburbs of the city instead of the old colonial streets. In low season it's the same low price for either location.

Also if you're burning up in the scorching afternoon heat, a trip the Gold Museum and its turbo air-conditioning is a good way to chill out and see some indigenous and colonial culture. There were several cultures active for thousands of years before the Spanish who have left behind all kinds of arts and shiny things.

Ooh, shiny!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huarmey - Mud, Sweat and Volunteers

Image
Mariciela in what used to be her bedroom After hearing so much about volunteering from other friends on the road, I decided to give up a couple of weeks to volunteer in a small town badly hit by flooding in March this year. So after a 23 hour bus to Lima, a night in the capital and another 5 hour bus up the coast, I found myself at the scene of one of the most catastrophic disasters to hit Peru in decades. Around the time I was flying into South America, most of the coastal provinces of Peru, normally a desert area, were subject to more rain than they would normally get in a year in a less than week. A lot of significant damage was done in the north of the country which is where most of the disaster response has occurred, but next to the small but important provincial town of Huarmey, the normally very placid local river became a raging torrent that sent flood water as high as 2 metres in two separate floods a few days apart. Before... The organisation I work for, All ...
Read more

Chicken Bus Fear - Should You Catch One?

To get around Central America without wheels of your own, you have two options: chicken buses, or tourist shuttles. Many travellers are nervous of chicken buses and choose to pay very high prices for shuttles, but you don't need to! Here is my list of reasons for shaking off the chicken bus fear and taking the wild ride with the locals: - Chicken buses are cheap! The general price for an inter-city chicken bus is about $1-2 per hour of driving. For example, the bus between Leon and Managua that takes around 2 hours generally costs 50-60 Cordoba or $2, while the minimum shuttle price is $9 for the same amount of time! - There's snacks on chicken buses! Nicaragua in particular has a thriving network of people dedicated to selling fresh food on chicken buses. Whether you want some fresh baked corn bread, donuts with treacle sauce, coconut bread, hot tamales, pineapple pastry popcorn, sweets or just some fruit and veg, the chicken buses have it all. The vendors board the bus ...
Read more

La Vida Nica - Chicken Buses

Image
I thought I would end my blog's long hiatus by doing a few posts about the 6 months I spent in Central America, most of that in Nicaragua. First up in the series is the iconic method of public transport in all Central American countries: the Chicken Bus! These types of buses run inter-city and suburban transport routes across Central America. The name comes from the habit of some locals to take their farm animals with them, and the name has stuck in the tourist community. It isn't as common as people make it out to be - I think in over 100 chicken bus rides I only saw a handful of chickens and a few boxes of chicks. That said, it does always make you giggle when you hear the box above your head tweeting as you drive. To run the bus you need at least two people: the chofer  (driver) and at least one  ayudante  (assistant). The driver's job is simple: navigating the route in as little time as possible, usually achieved through driving that would make Vin Diesel ...
Read more