Adventures of North Star

Follow the Adventures of Kim and Steve aboard their yacht North Star!

09 July 2019
08 July 2019
04 July 2019
02 July 2019
31 May 2019 | Copra Shed, Savusavu, Fiji
28 March 2018
05 March 2018 | Queenstown view from the top of the gondola.
21 May 2016 | Tahiti, French Polynesia
14 September 2015
12 September 2015 | In Maupiti
17 August 2015 | Huahine, French Polynesia
13 July 2015 | Anyse Amyot-North End of Taou
20 June 2015 | Fakarava-South Pass
18 June 2015 | Fakarava-South Pass
11 June 2015 | Fakarava-South, Harifa
06 June 2015 | Fakarava, North Pass

Santa Marta and surrounding areas

20 May 2011
Please visit our new Photo Gallery
We arrived in Santa Marta, Colombia ready for a full nights rest. We wanted to anchor outside the marina for the first day and night and proceed into the marina the next morning. Before we could find a spot to anchor, the marina contacted us on the VHF and asked if we wanted to come inside the breakwater to a slip. We conveyed to them we would like to anchor out for the first day. They told us we would have to arrange any anchoring with the Coast Guard. About this time, we did notice a small gray boat with several officials on board coming our direction. The marina spoke with them and informed us that we could not anchor anywhere in Santa Marta. If we wanted to anchor, we had to continue on a few miles south to another bay. Somewhat reluctantly, we got all of the fenders ready and headed into our slip. From the beginning, the staff at the marina were very helpful and will help out wherever they could.

Before we could get situated on the dock the agent that is required to clear customs and immigration was on the dock. We used the Romero Agency and dealt with Dino. He is handling all of the paperwork and importing the boat. We have since had a coffee with Dino. He is very eager to provide a good service for his clients. We will post more about this as we continue to Cartagena with hopefully, no problems. After all the formalities, we plugged in the power cords, turned on the ac and hit the sheets for several hours. I had several opportunities to sleep on the way over from Aruba but Steve really needed to catch up as he had been awake most of the trip. The rest of the first day we spent getting things put away and organized.

The first night in the slip, we awoke in the middle of the night to winds gusting down from the Sierra Nevadas. We checked the instruments and 6 knots was average but the gust came out of nowhere and were as high as 30 knots. We heard from our friends that were here in the winter that the gust were up to 60 knots. John, the dock master told us they had several broken dock fingers from these high gusts. The marina here is new and has been adding amenities even while we are here. The restrooms opened just before we arrived, the washing machines and dryers were up and running after we had been here two weeks and hot water in the showers may be here any day. There is a helipad also but I don't believe we will be needing to use it any time soon.

The beach is right next to the marina and on the weekends it is packed with locals. There are almost more street vendors than sunbathers. The vendors are selling everything from sunglasses to watches, fruit, drinks, food. The vendors are very pleasant and with a "no gracias" continue on their way. This is a nice change from some of the other places we have been. The vendor idea is seen all over the town with carts and umbrellas crowding both sides of the street.

So far in our stay here we have only come across approximately five people that speak English. John, the dock master, Maria in the marina office, one server in the mall, which we later found out only speaks English in relation to the food items on his menu, a tour guide named Claudia, and Dino the agent used for clearing in. This has been our biggest challenge here. I thought my four years of high school Spanish would have been more useful. But, I am finding that because it was never used in a real setting we are not able to communicate like I hoped. The people here are very patient and we do what we can with my Spanish, pointing and some writing. It took several tries to get a local sim card with time on it and we still have not figured out how to set up the voice mail because all prompts are in Spanish. We have managed to get to and from the places we wanted to go. In just a few weeks there has been some improvement. I am starting to learn what I want to say but it is still very difficult to understand the answers we get from the locals because it may be too fast or a word I have never heard. Even going to the movie was a challenge until we figured out how to be sure we were seeing a movie in English or at least with English sub titles. We were told the dock hands at the marina are having English classes and at a local restaurant. They had a short conversation with us in English and we tried Spanish.

We took our first taxi ride to one of the two local malls. Horn blowing is continuous and driving looks like some kind of crazy dance where the car in front leads. There are two lanes on most of the roads we have been on and cars, bikes coming the right way and the wrong way, horse and donkey driven carts and many motorcycles compete to be in the front. It seems like the object of the game is to be the car in the lead, never use your breaks and see how close you can come to other traffic without actually hitting anything. When you step from the curb, you better be sure you can make it to the other side because the same rules apply to adult, children and animals. The two malls are very nice. One called Buena Vista and the other Oceans. They both have movie theaters in them and a food court. We have seen a movie or two in English with Spanish subtitles. One of the malls has a haircut shop for children (photo in gallery). The shop is brightly colored and each child has a large tv's with movies and cartoons in front of their station. The children sit in little race cars for their haircut. We have the pedodontist and pediatric health care in the states. I can't believe we don't have one of these somewhere for those willing to pay a little extra for the "experience" of having you child's hair cut.

The food here has been great and at a reasonable price. We have eaten at several restaurants and in the food court. The portions even for lunch are all very large and we can sometimes eat several meals off of one order. Fruit drinks seem to be very popular and we have found several we like. Cherry lemonade is one of them. Frozen strawberries and raspberries are found in huge frozen carts at the grocery store. There are several grocery stores, two in town and one at each mall. I am sure there are more but these are the ones we have found so far. We also heard of a large membership store across from the mall called Makro we hope to check out. At the Exito grocery store we had a slice of tres leches dessert. This is translated three milk and is a cake that is very moist, sweet and very good. A cream is poured on top and runs down into the cake. There are several of these type sauce that can be added to fruit on the fruit bar. I read before we came to Colombia that the people here have a sweet tooth and I tend to agree.

We took and inland trip to Tyronaka with Claudia, a bilingual tourist guide. Cell number (57) 311 546-4727 and email clamont@hotmail.com. She also works with the cruise ship that arrives on Sunday at this time of the year. The price of the tour was not inexpensive but fair. She provided a very nice, organized and private trip for us with a taxi driver named Louis for the day. (see photo gallery) We left Santa Marta and headed out of town. We went through a toll booth and passed several armed police and military check points, The drive was about an hour and a half to an unmarked turn off in the road. We drove through a small village that seemed to be more pool tables than homes and arrived at a river. We took a boat up the river to the facility. Amazingly, there were not any mosquitoes or other biting bugs. We had a tour of the small museum that contained arrows, artifacts, pictures, jewelry and some pottery. Afterward, we looked in the huts that were built on round plateaus with stones to line the edges. The husband and wife entered through different doors. The husband through the front and the wife in the back. There was a place for a fire right in the middle and a hammock to one side. Guess who this was for. Right, the husband. The wife slept on a mat on the floor next to the hammock. The guide told us this was because the woman was to sleep closest to terra or the earth for fertility reasons. We were fortunate enough to see two poisonous dart frogs. I asked it this was a regular occurrence and we were told no. They found the frogs the day before on another tour and they were still there when we arrived but they have not seen them before. We finished the tour by spending a few minutes with a pet raccoon. Tim got to go inside the cage and the raccoon climbed all over him. It was more like a dog than a raccoon. It loved attention and did not want us to leave. We had lunch and then dipped our feet in the river. We were encouraged to go for a swim but our legs were numb from the knees down where we were wading so we decided against a full body dip. We were introduced to a little girl that looked to be about 6 years old that lived in the area. She was a full blood Kogui Indian. She was very pretty and had very distinct features. We made our return trip down the Buritaca River. We passed an area on the bank of the river that had some of these round huts we had seen on the tour right at the rivers edge. Claudia told us this was the film site of a movie that was being made. There were also a handful of children on the opposite bank enjoying the water. They gave a a eager wave as we passed.

Our next excursion was not as pleasant. We took a taxi with some friends we made in the marina, on sailing vessel Taz, to the small fishing village to the north of Santa Marta called Taganga. We read on line that this was the place to snorkel. Snorkel gear in hand we arrived and were immediately asked if we wanted a boat ride to the "best" place to snorkel. I had read this was the place to snorkel so after some negotiations and a nice lunch in town we headed off for a 15 minute or so ride to the location. The water was cold as we started our snorkel. The bottom in this area is seaweed. Very little coral or sponge growth. There were a few fish, mostly juveniles hiding in the weed. We returned to the shore and some of the group played paddle ball. Here there were some annoying little yellow bees. We thought at first they did not sting but later found out they can. We headed back to the town and had a time of renegotiating of the price. Initially, we were told that if we were not happy with the fish we would not have to pay anything. Luckily, the crew aboard Taz is fluent in Spanish so they were able to reduce the price some. This tour I would not recommend at all.

Our next excursion was to Minca and San Lorenzo. Our friends on Taz also wanted to go to Minca so we planned a trip together. We went to the tourism office and got all of the information we could. Actually, Tamara got all the information and translated it for us. We did not want to end up with another expensive tour of nothing like the one we had in Taganga. We had to pay some park fees before we left town. You do this by going to the bank and depositing the money in an account. The next day we took two taxis up to Minca. We heard from our friends that were here in December that it is cooler in Minca than Santa Marta. Today it was warm and humid. We found a hostel up the hill from town to stay in for the night. We went back to town and got a few supplies and had hand made pasta for lunch at Sierra Sound. Steve and I were a little nervous about the hike up the mountain after all, we have not had real shoes on our feet in over a year. It is around 15 miles up and we did not know how straight up the hike would be to San Lorenzo Research Center. We inquired about alternative ways up the mountain. You could be the passenger on the back of a motorcycle. Thank goodness we did not pick that way. After seeing the dirt, gully washed road, I am sure we would have been bounced off at some point on the way up, maybe more than once. We chose to go up the mountain the next morning in the back Willys jeep. We returned to our cabin, had a pizza delivered and got ready for bed. Tim had a prize in his bed. He started to put his head on his pillow and he saw a few very large black ants. He killed them and then the search was on. Out came more and more. He thew the pillow on the floor and the entire nest came out all carrying eggs in their mouth. We finally got all the ants killed and went to bed. We were told it usually rains around noon here and rarely at night. About 10 pm the bottom fell out and the rains let loose. The power went off so no lights and no fan. Tim was obviously a little jumpy about bugs in his bed from the ant experience. Not long after the power went out he sprang out of the bed with his i pod for a light and said a giant scorpion was trying to kill him. There was a pretty big scorpion heading out under the crack in the door. During the night we were awakened by a loud noise that sounded like a gun shot. The next morning we discovered the repeated noise was a mangoes falling out of the trees onto the roof when the wind would blow. The hostel had a great view, a swimming pool, ping pong table and 4 baby kittens to play with.

We headed up the mountain the next morning. The ride was bumpy but nice with great views. It took about 3-4 hours. As we headed up the mountain we could feel the temperature changing. When we arrived at San Lorenzo we checked out our cabin and headed out for a hike to a waterfall. We returned to the cabin and played some games. The challenge was staring a fire. Zsolte worked hard to get a fire going but all of the wood was wet from the recent rain and only a small fire would stay lit. Any warmth was welcomed. At night it was very cold and we all slept with our faces under the blankets. The wind was howling through the trees all night. We were planning on going up the mountain further in the morning to the Ciero Kennedy then hike back down to Minca. We were told the hike up took two hours. We were all up very early but the North Star group decided to not make the trip to Ciero Kennedy, where you can see the snow capped mountains. It was dark, cold and we were afraid if we went to the top and all the way back down we would not make it to Minca in daylight. The crew from Taz headed up and were back in no time. They took some photos of the snow covered Sierra Nevadas. I will try to get a copy before we leave. As we packed up and headed down the mountain a large open party bus arrive at the research center with about 30-40 older teenagers inside. We planned our timing just right. The trip down was scenic. It did rain for about an hour. We were passed by a small herd of Brahman cattle. We got way off of the dirt road for them. There are only a few houses and one or two very small stores the size of a broom closet with mostly drinks, small candies and a few necessities like flour and toilet paper on the way down. There were a few four wheel drive vehicles going up and several motorcycles. We were most of the way down when Taz put their teenager, Amaury, on a motorcycle to the bottom because his legs had given out. Not long after that we were asked if we wanted a ride to Minca or Santa Marta in the back of a big 4 wheel drive truck that had the remnants of corn in the back of it. We paid the reasonable fair and went back to Santa Marta. Taz stayed one more night in Minca.

When we arrived back at North Star, got some take out, a shower and slept great.

Blisters, bruised toenails and we all had a great time.





Comments
Vessel Name: North Star
Vessel Make/Model: Tayana 52, Center Cockpit
Hailing Port: Clearwater, Florida
Crew: Steve and Kim
About:
Steve has been sailing for about 45 years, starting with Optimist pram racing in St. Petersburg, FL many years ago. Steve and Kim sailed the waters of Florida, the Bahamas and the Gulf of Mexico for 10 years on our prior boat, Breath of Heaven. [...]
Extra: North Star is a 1988 Tayana 52, center cockpit, a Robert Perry design.
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