Chill time

With a bus to Santa Marta at 0930 departing from a station 45 mins away, we took breakfast at the earliest possible time of 0730.  Being the first there, we were served immediately and were out within 25 mins.

The first taxi driver we found offered a good honest price of COP30K.  Traffic was bad coming into the city but we had a decent run getting us to the station at 0835.

The bus left about 10 mins late for the 5h15 ride to Santa Marta via Baranquilla and a couple of small stops.  We were videoed at each departure point.

The ride started through green low-lying areas.  After Baranquilla, we travelled along a long bar or low causeway.  The sea looked quite nice once we reached the “mainland” once more and some resorts and apartments were seen near the airport.

We had organised a car with our accommodation at the Blue Mango.  I had kept him in touch with our progress through the ride but he stupidly changed SIMs as we pulled into Santa Marta’s station on-time at 1445, meaning that we had a little difficulty locating each other.

It rained as we started our drive to the Tayrona National Park and our hotel slightly beyond that.  The road went inland and uphill before returning to the coast.  Again we were surprised by how good the roads are in Colombia; much better than in Sarawak and even the intercity highways are much better than those in New Zealand.

We turned off the main road into a small road, then into a small sandy track surrounded by bushes.  The sandy track appeared to be a private road, guarded by a man.  The driver had to give a printed approval with my name on it for us to let through. A few tiny resorts were located off the track, confirming that we were travelling parallel to the beach.  We felt very isolated.

We arrived at the Blue Mango at 1610.  There was a short wait for the receptionist as she sorted out billing issues with a couple of young women.  Kim was getting grumpy.  He asked to view the room first, then whether we could be closer to the pool, then double-checked whether it was air-conditioned.

I thought it was the long day and waiting that got to him but he later explained that it was the dislike of being help captive at exorbitant prices that bothered him.  Luckily, prices here weren’t too different from city prices for foreigners.  And the quality of the food was very good, as we found out.  Also, staff were nice and the receptionist spoke English.

Having missed lunch, we ordered snacks from the bar.  We ordered at 1700 and the fish tacos came soon after but it was about 1800 when the chips came.  They had been lovingly prepared from scratch to look like factory chips when I would have preferred large chunky chips.

By the time we had finished these, the dinner time band had started but we weren’t ready.  We returned to the room to find the floors no longer sticky with humidity.  After a couple of hours rest, we returned to the pool/bar area and shared a half-and-half pizza of spinach on one side and prawn on the other.  The pizza base is the best I’ve had in recent memory!  It wasn’t what I had wanted but I ended up loving it.

After doing 25-30000 steps per day in Switzerland, full-on travel around Colombia with a sick partner, this is finally our time to chill.