Santa Marta Colombia
14 November 2015 | Marina Santa Marta
Bert - Hot, Hot and Hot
We arrived from Curacao in Santa Marta Colombia on October 4, 2015 which is nearly 6 weeks ago and I have not posted a blog about this wonderful city and the fun things we are doing here. We posted a blog about our visit to Bogota but not Santa Marta and also nothing about our trip to Barranquilla 2 weeks ago. It is not that we think there is nothing to report but it is just because we are so busy and the fact that I was sick for almost two weeks.
When we came back from Barranquilla I felt a cold coming on. It was a very nasty cold and at the same time I had some heart problems. To feel better I persuaded myself against better judgment to take too much heart and cold medication including aspirin. At night I had a stomach bleeding which I did not take too seriously since I had a similar experience in Grenada that ceased after I stopped using my heart medicine and aspirin for one month at the advice of the Grenadian doctor. However, the following night the bleeding became much worse and even my bed sheets were full of blood. Since we donot speak sufficient Spanish we did not dare trying to find medical help in the middle of the night so we were very happy when it was finally morning so we could ask the marina staff for help. Marina Santa Marta has a contract with a medical service and a doctor came on board, gave me an injection and medications to help stop the bleeding. One of the dock hands “Luis” was our interpreter. Luis only left the boat in a hurry saying in both English and Spanish “I cannot handle needles” when the doctor took a syringe out of his bag. I am doing a lot better now although I am still a little shaky after days of a diet consisting of light chicken soup but I started to eat some solid food a couple of days ago and we also took our first power walk.
Can you image I worked for many years in the 1970’s in South America and before we left on this trip we lived for 6 years in Miami Beach where most of the people we know have Spanish as their mother tongue and we have such little knowledge of this beautiful language we can hardly order a meal. We need to learn to speak Spanish. Dorothy is already taking private lessons on a daily basis from a too good looking young man and all the employees in the marina help her practice.
This brings me to the Marina Santa Marta. This marina is great, relatively new with beautiful docks and facilities. The marina is in front of the city and everything you want or need is a walking distance away. We have a slip with an extra wide pier where I put my dinghy that is constantly in need of repairs. The marina has a helicopter landing pad, a nice breezeway, a captain’s lounge and a mini market. When the national Colombian soccer team plays the marina organizes a party around the TV with free food and snacks. They did the same with Halloween but we did not attend that party since I was sick. However, the employees are the ones who are making this marina very special. Kelly, the office manager is fluent in English she is our translator, tour guide and helps us with everything else we ask her. One of the dock hands “Luis” also speaks good English and he helped us with the doctor and one day he walked with us to the bank when we had problems with our ATM card.
Although the other members of the marina staff do not speak English we can still communicate with them especially during their daily rounds when they check on us how we are doing and ask if there is something that we need.
The boulevard along the sea wall starts at the marina and we really enjoy our evening walk along the boulevard watching all the people, the street vendors who sell food, drinks and small souvenirs. Although I cannot drink it for the time being, my favorite is the freshly squeezed orange juice and the coffee. Where in the world can you buy great coffee at less than 20 cents a cup from a guy walking along the streets with 10 thermos flasks with hot coffee? The last couple of weeks were even more special. Next week is the end of the school year and students are graduating and/or transferring to the next level. For this occasion both male and female students all wear white clothing and they come to the boulevard to take pictures, have their class pictures taken and just have fun together (see our pictures). They are all so young and beautiful and full of hope for a great future.
We also love to walk through the city with a lot of historical building with large and wide streets for the major traffic routes and the narrow streets and squares, that are either one way traffic or for pedestrians only. Some streets are lined on both sides with street vendors and there is only a small travel path between the stores in the buildings and the street vendors. In one of these streets is our favorite local lunch restaurant where we eat together a full meal with drinks for US$ 7.00! In Colombia the major meal of the day is lunch and most employees have a 2 hour lunch break.
Just opposite of the largest shopping center in Santa Marta is the estate La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino (Spanish for Quinta of Saint Peter of Alexandria). It is a hacienda or quinta built in the 17th century, famous for being the place where Simón Bolívar passed away on December 17, 1830. At that time, the estate produced rum, honey and panela. On the estate is an impressive monument in honor of Simón Bolivar that looks like the “Lincoln Memorial” in Washington DC in the USA. This estate is now turned into a botanical garden with the most impressive old trees I have ever seen.
The first trip we took was to Minca a township of Santa Marta in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The road distance is only about 10 miles but due to the road condition and all the construction to update this narrow dirt road it took us over an hour to get to Minca. Most visitors walk to a nice waterfall called “Pozo Azul”, but we hiked with two tours guides first to the “Lost Water Fall”. After meeting up with the group who repelled from the water fall we continued over very narrow and steep trails to the Pozo Azul. It rained so heavily that it did not make a difference if you stood in the rain or under the waterfall. We left at 830AM and returned to the boat at 7:00PM, wet and covered with mud but we had a great time.
The following Sunday we spent on the beach in Rodadero. It was the last day of the vacation period and the beach and the water were absolutely full and I mean full of people. We rented a nice beach tent with chairs for the entire day for US$10.00 and it was not only nice to watch the world go by but also see the vendors who sell absolutely everything. We could get a full body massage, our hair done and dreadlocks for the women. The utmost was a full bar on wheels (actually a miniature truck) where they sell every kind of mixed drink served in a coconut with an umbrella (see our pictures). You could also order lunch served on the beach from one of the nearby restaurants, we did and we had a delicious lunch.
We made 2 very nice dives in Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona about 25 miles east of Santa Marta. In between the two dives we had a nice lunch in the cabana built on a cliff by the dive center. The boat departed from Taganga a small fishing village just north of Santa Marta, but to get there you have to pass a high ridge part of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the only mountain range in the Caribbean with snow on top.
We made a 4 day trip to Barranquilla, Colombia. Barranquilla is a city of over 2.5 million people half way along the Caribbean coast between Santa Marta and Cartagena. This city is thriving and will most likely turn into a modern metropolis with high rise building activity everywhere, but unfortunately with a general neglect of the historical buildings. But we found a few of them besides the churches and cathedrals and they are beautiful. Our hotel “Hotel Majestic” was a real classic and the service accordingly very traditional. Our trip to the “Castillo de Salgar” on the cliffs along the coast was great. We posted a separate picture album for this trip.
Our trip to Bogota is described in a separate blog that we posted earlier and next week we are going to spend a week in Cartagena de Indias of which we will report in our next blog.