Santa Marta, Tayrona & Taganga

After returning from The Lost City I spent a night in a new hostel called: The Drop Bear!  How amusing!  The drop bear is a mythical Australian creature which is like a vicous koala and has the habit of dropping down on people’s heads.  When we used to camp in the karri forrests, the loud explosive sounds caused by self pruning branches crashing to the ground, were attributed to drop bears! I remember being particularly frightened of the damn things!  So I was quite amused to find  a hostel of this name.  It is a brand new  hostel in a huge ex drug cartel house in a residential area.  There are dorms, single rooms and plenty of hammocks.  The hostel is really inviting and the staff very friendly, plus there is a central swimming pool, a large TV room big enough to host a ball and a small cosy bar.  I highly recommend it.

I only stayed one night as then I got a lovely surprise of an invite to use one of Camila’s friend’s holiday apartment on the beach.  The views from the balcony out across the Caribbean Sea were breathtaking and it was the perfect place to relax and recover from the trek.

Santa Marta is a popular tourist destination as well as an important port, with an interesting history dating back to pre-Colombian times.  There is an old part of town featuring colonial buildings and narrow streets that open up into plazas.  The weather is hot and the beach is always crowded with many stallholders selling a range of fruits and food along the boulevard.  It is a great place to walk and people watch in the evenings, when it starts to cool down, but it can also be very windy.

I took a trip out to Tayrona National Park, which is a huge park in the Sierra Nevada, encompassing about 30 sq km of ocean, including spectacular beaches, and 150 sq km of rain forrest with a range of climates from sea level to 900m.  It is an important park for its biodiversity and endemic species.  When entering the park you need to take a small bus deeper in and then walk for another 2 hours through the rain forrest before reaching the ocean.  After such a long and hot and sweaty walk it is rather disappointing to be faced with loads of red flags and warnings when all you feel like doing is running into the surf!  To find safer beaches, you need to walk a lot further.

 I also took a trip to Taganga which is a popular picturesque bay south of Tayrona National Park.  Boats go from here to various bays in the park.   I took a small boat to the next bay: Playa Grande, but did not linger long for reasons which will be obvious when you see the photos 🙂   

Click bottom right corner here to see in large size.