On the bus to Santa Marta we got chatting to
another traveller; Ben from London who was also coming from
Venezuela. Me and him ended up at the same hostel, called Dreamer
Hostel, which was another gringo-haven but also had a few travellers
from various south american countries to redress the balance.
5 minutes walk from the hostel was a massive
supermarket as well as Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, the estate on
which Simon Bolivar spent his last days. I am ashamed to say that
during our stay in Santa Marta we made several visits to the former
but failed to visit the latter (we did try but alas the holiday
opening times were against us). Much like duty free zones in airports
and hotel lobbies, large supermarkets create a space where any sense
of which country you are in completely vanishes and, apart from
everything being in Spanish and the biscuit isles being dominated by
Oreos, this place was no different.
Me and Ben made a little excursion to a nearby
beach town called El Rodadero and over lunch of excellent fish broth
watched Liverpool against Newcastle, live, which for me was a bit of
a surreal experience (although Ben said he'd managed to watch quite a
bit of Premier League football on his travels). Obviously we had no
idea of telling if El Rodadero and Santa Marta were at all
representative of Colombia as a whole but walking around and making
comparisons with Venezuela it was clear straight away that Colombia
came out on top. True, the streets are still grimy in places, but
they aren't as grimy. Walking around at night isn't safe but
at least you see locals walking around as well. And much as I'd
wanted to convince myself that underneath Venezuela's cloak of
“dangerousness” lay a people who were open and friendly, our
first day over the border already convinced me that even in this
respect the Venezuelans lagged behind the Colombians. Perhaps I'll
review these premature generalisations when I leave Colombia...
In the evening I went for a drink with the Coro
girls in Santa Marta centre. We'd agreed to have a quiet one since it
was the night before new year's eve but somehow the lively atmosphere
in town saw us change plans and stumble upon a great little bar/club
(which we later found was recommended in all the travel guides)
called La Puerta. The outdoor seating area seemed to be extremely
conducive to meeting new friends and fairly quickly we were chatting
and dancing with locals. Particularly nice was recognising some songs
that Mavis had given me in Santa Elena all those weeks (months!?)
ago. My first day in Colombia didn't disappoint.
New years eve was spent lazing around the
hostel pool and getting to know the other travellers including a few
games of chess with a middle aged Brazilian guy (I pleasantly
surprised myself and actually won a couple of games). The hostel is
another location where the sense of which country you are in gets
lost among the German, Swedish, Australian etc accents all speaking
English or their native languages – very different to my travelling
experience in Venezuela.
As
day turned to night most of the people at the hostel, including
myself, opted to join in with the party the hostel was organising.
After the usual drinking fare, a “traditional” chiva bus,
with no seats but plenty of dancing space and a hefty sound system,
came to pick us up and drove us to the beach where we joined what
felt like thousands of locals to welcome in 2012. It was a great
night; running into the Caribbean at midnight, laughing at the
pathetic fireworks, trying to dance on the chiva bus while the driver
did his best to make sure we all ended up on the floor and finally
ending up at, of all places, La Puerta. The atmosphere was great and
after getting kicked out at 4 am we spent the first hours of dawn on
the beach. As we headed back to the hostel in the morning, on many
street corners the locals were still sitting out drinking and
blasting music at full volume.
 |
| Happy New Year! |
On
new year's day me and Ben dragged our tired bodies and throbbing
heads out of the hostel and got a taxi to the nearby fishing village
of Taganga where after a bit of searching we found lodgings and
headed to the sea front for what would be the first of many fish
suppers. The fish here is absolutely delicious and scarily cheap by
english standards. As a result we would have the same plate of fish
(of various types and sizes), coconut rice, plantain and salad
virtually every day for next week. During our first meal we were
greeted by a middle aged guy sitting at the table opposite. The man
was very agitated and after saying a few sentences to us would walk
over to the kitchen and mutter something to the woman cooking our
food then wonder back and say a few more sentences to us. After a
while he brought up the subject of cocaine and his behaviour began to
make sense; me and Ben shared a look as Ben whispered “He is
absolutely gone”. We managed to ascertain that he'd recently come
out of jail where he'd been sent for narcotics trafficking (he still
had an electronic tag on his ankle). He was a really crazy and
eccentric guy and within half an hour was all for trying to get us
involved in some trafficking which he was trying to start up again
(an offer we politely declined). On the plus side, he'd lived in
Taganga for a while and gave us recommendations for the best places
to check out. This was definitely the most surreal experience of the
trip so far. After only 3 days in Colombia I was confronted with the
reality of its drug reputation. I guess reputations exist for a
reason...
Taganga
is a small village but currently brimming with tourists (a lot of
them from other South American countries) here for their holidays. Me
and Ben were here to do the “PADI Open Water” scuba diving course
(Taganga is one of the cheapest places in the world to do decent
diving), which is something I only really decided to do after hearing
Barry (from the foundation) rave about diving and then finding out
how cheap it was to do it here. It would be almost rude not to have a
go.
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