We arrived safely early on Saturday morning, filled up with diesel for the boat and gasoline for the dinghy, and got safely settled into a nice berth at the Marina Santa Marta on the north coast of Colombia.

This marina is calm and has good staff who are very helpful and good security. Very high mountains surround the city with the highest reaching 18,000 feet tall. It is usually cloud covered so we haven't actually seen the peak.

On Monday we took a local taxi up into the mountain town of Minca, which is small village inhabited since pre-Colombian times. The road to get to Minca was challenging to say the least and our taxi driver had to negotiate the ruts and rocks and wash outs carefully, all the while dodging other trucks and cars coming the other direction. It confirmed our decision to NOT rent a car and drive ourselves. The taxi driver turned out to be very friendly, and because his wife had grown up in Minca, he knew many local people.

First we visited a coffee plantation, La Victoria, started by Englishmen in 1892. It is now owned by locals and the extremely steep hillsides where the coffee plants are grown are farmed by migrant workers who are paid by the number of boxes of beans they pick every day. It was an interesting tour (although only in Spanish, we managed to understand the basics).

Next we stopped at the walking trail to famous Blue Pools. Because Monday was a holiday, there were many local families walking the trail to the crystal clear, cool pools of water which cascaded down the mountainside. It was definitely a refreshing change from the heat of the coast.