Colombian Coast
Santa Marta itself is a bustling city, which was why our relaxing day in Parque Tayrona was a great respite.
We arrived in Santa Marta in the evening after a 5 hour bus ride from Cartagena. The sun had set but people were still out and about on the streets, selling food or gathering to listen to a local play the guitar. We checked into our hostel, hit the hostel’s rooftop bar for dinner, grabbed some supplies from the store down the street, and went to bed early for the next morning.
6 a.m. wake up for an adventurous day ahead. We made our way over to the public market and found the bus to take us to Parque Tayrona. Look for a white bus with the words “Parque Tayrona” on them (versus all the local blue buses of Santa Marta) and you can purchase your one way ticket right in the office it’s parked outside of. The bus also leaves every half hour and doesn’t take too long to arrive at the park. Pro tip: If you’re trying to go to the park just for the day and not sleep over inside of it, I would recommend taking one of the earlier buses — depending which path you want to hike inside the park, the hike will take several hours (round trip), and there is a short line to buy entrance tickets.
Once we got our tickets and listened to someone explain the layout of the park and the paths, we took the shuttle bus up the road (for like $2) and set off on our hike. We decided to hike the path that would lead us to Cabo San Juan, the beach that is considered the tourist favorite.
The hike took us through jungles of palm trees, where we caught glimpses of monkeys high up in trees and wild horses. The weather was a bit cooler and misting, which was nice for the hike. We passed a few beaches before we got to the first one you can swim at: La Piscina. This beach was quiet (especially early in the day) and peaceful.
About 20 minutes from La Piscina is Cabo San Juan. The beach was every bit as beautiful as it was described to us. You literally step out from the jungle onto this crescent shaped beach, with a little pond area to your left that supposedly has alligators in it (aka not swimmable) and a wooden gazebo off in the back that you can climb up to. Another nice thing about Cabo San Juan is that there are plenty of palm trees for some shade! All three of us got insanely sun-burned at La Piscina, where there was no cover at all. There’s also some bathrooms (for 1000 COP and make sure to grab enough tissue paper at the desk you pay at) as well as food and drinks you can order. I got a delicious mango smoothie to cool off with and ordered it completely in Spanish!
After a nice little nap in the shade, we explored the gazebo. There were colorful hammocks to recline on and amazing views of the water and a spot to look back at the beach from.
We then made our way to the food area to wait for our boat ride. That morning when we bought our park entrance tickets, we got sold on taking a boat ride from Cabo San Juan to the little fishing town of Taganga. This way, you didn’t have to hike back to the park entrance. The boat ride took us around the whole edge of the park and ended in Taganga, where the seafood is fresher than in Santa Marta. The bus back to Santa Marta’s public market is cheaper from Taganga than from the park’s entrance.
Pro tip: don’t get sold on the boat ride and just hike back to the entrance if you’re not staying over in the park. This boat ride was the most unnecessarily rough ride ever, was about an hour long, expensive, and literally everyone on the boat got completely soaked. That said, if you DO decide to take the boat ride (the rollercoaster-like bumpiness is fun for about the first five minutes), make sure you actually listen to the captain and pass your bag/stuff up to the front to be stowed in a little room that gets locked up! I didn’t, thinking we were taking a serene boat ride, that there was no way our stuff would get wet if I held onto it, and that it was safer to hold onto my expensive possessions anyway.
Taganga
Biggest mistake of my life. My camera, which I wore around my neck and hid from the water underneath my life jacket, got completely soaked, and despite the camera body being weather resistant, it broke. I also had my iPhone in the back pocket of my shorts and that also got soaked. This all would’ve been fine if the boat ride was 20 minutes, but it was at least a whole hour and we had no idea it would be that long in the first place. My iPhone got so waterlogged that the screen was freaking out and I had to stick it in rice for 2 days. Luckily, that worked and I only had to get rice out of the audio jack with tweezers to fix the remaining problems, but my Fujifilm camera was not as lucky and didn’t get fixed by the rice. A month later, I’ve finally gotten my camera inspected and got quoted $1000 for the repair, which is almost as expensive as what I bought it new for… Consider that a lesson learned! We were all so tired from the day and the boat ride that we decided to head back to Santa Marta upon arriving Taganga instead of staying for dinner and watching the sunset as planned.
The bus back was indeed extremely affordable, but I learned yet another lesson on it. Pro tip: once you enter the bus and pay, don’t step outside even if you’re waiting for the bus to move — I did and had to pay twice the fare. There’s a tall skinny scanner at the doors of the bus that I didn’t notice to count the number of people who get on the bus. After paying, I got up from my seat and went down onto the steps of the bus to get a (bad) picture of the sunset and then got yelled at in Spanish when I sat back down. I don’t speak any Spanish so I just shrugged my shoulders to try to tell them I didn’t understand. I eventually got that everyone was telling me I had to pay a second time as, essentially, another passenger. Fun times!
Luckily, I ended the evening on a good note out at La Gringo Cantina. We had befriended a Danish guy on the crazy boat ride who happened to be staying at the same hostel as us and all went out to dinner after a nice shower. The cantina was on this long street of restaurants, each playing a different kind of music. After dinner, we hit the store again for more water and had another early night. Read about the day trip to Minca we took the next day here!