Santa Marta, Colombia

We absolutely enjoy Santa Marta. It’s safe to walk around anywhere, the shopping is great, the dollar goes a long ways and to Sid’s liking they sell box rum!!!

But wow what a horny place. You can not even imagine how horny everybody is here. It happens anywhere and at any time. The minute we leave the marina gate, crossing the street, further up the street, around the corner from there, in town, it’s everywhere the same and there is no escape from it. But see for yourself:

We haven’t figured out yet who are the horniest, the taxi drivers or the motorcycle riders, most of the time they honk for no reason. And I tell you they don’t slow down for pedestrians either, on the contrary it seems like that’s when they speed up. We truly believe that they buy the car by the sound of the horn!

Everybody is super friends though even the horny taxi drivers and best yet they do not cheat us on the fair because we are tourists, there is a flat rate of 4000 pesos about US$ 2 in town and to Rodadero or Taganga neighboring villages 8000.

Comparing Colombia now to ten years ago it is a much, much safer place, before we could not leave the city of  Cartagena and travel in the country. Thanks to President Álvaro Uribe and President Bush fighting the drug war in Colombia they changed it into a safe place again. Current President Juan Manuel Santos is following Uribes steps and is especially going after corruption and the FARC.

 We’ve been walking pretty much anywhere in town. One day we hit the local market, although not very organized looking, it is a fun market to explore and watch people. The fruit and veggie stands are colorful and the meat tables ah, well, hmm, maybe a little gross, I definitely would not buy meat here. 

Fish

 

Wonderful Produce

The fish section is better with a variety of fresh fish to choose from (although I prefer to get the fish from the local fishermen on the beach). One very friendly market girl approached me and showed me a string with some kind of orange/white balls encouraging me to buy the string. Of course I was curious what it was and when she told me they were “Huevos de Iguanas” Iguana eggs! No thanks not today. Not that I wouldn’t try them but how the heck will I find a recipe on how to cook Iguana eggs!  

Iguana  eggs anyone?!!!

In one corner of the market is one hairdresser after another and since Sid was in need of a haircut he braved it to get one here. The cute hairdresser, ready to pop her baby at any time, was very profession in buzzing his hair short, she even trimmed his eye brows and sprayed some stinky stuff all over him for a shocking price of 5000 Pesos/US$ 2.50.  Right next to her stall was a beer joint with 60 cents beer, now that’s what I call a great hair cutting day!

You haven’t seen Santa Marta if you haven’t visited Rodadero which is the Palm Springs of Colombia. And since it was still Christmas Holiday I thought it would be interesting to see the last of the festivities “Three Kings Day”. Every where in the world Three Kings Day is celebrated on the 6^th of January, not here, here they figured out a clever way to extend the Holidays for a few extra days. It is celebrated on the first Monday after the 6^th of January, after that everybody goes back to work. That makes for a one month long holiday.

Remembering my visit to Rodadero 10 years ago it was a busy place then but didn’t quite expect it this busy. The beach was packed, three rows deep with yellow sunshades and not one was vacant. Between the shades and the water you could barely see any sand it was packed with people and the water was filled with bobbing heads. The sidewalk was the same picture packed to the rim with visitors and the air was filled with all the delicious smells of food vendors sold and the laughter and chit chatter of happy families. We had fun mingling and watching everybody. One vendor was of interesting to us “Cocos Frio” chilled coconuts with or without rum. The girl wanted 1 dollar without and 7 US dollar with rum. So we went across the street and purchased an 8 dollar bottle of rum and bought 4 coconuts and poured our own rum, yummy. It was a fun day and we had our fill of being in a crowd and decided it was Margarita time, which turned out to be the worst and most expensive Margarita ever, we don’t always have good luck, that’s when we decided it was time to go home and make a real Margarita.

After weeks of nerve wrecking wind we finally got a break for a couple of days, just enough time to shovel some sand out of our boats. Yes like some of you still shoveling snow we shovel sand (we use the hose as the shovel and have a bathing suit on).  

The quiet didn’t last long as three days later the wind picked up again for another 4 days. After shoveling some more sand we finally could relax for about a week. We finally braved it to put our sunshade up as it gets really hot without a breeze. Same night at midnight we scrambled on deck to take the awning down as the wind blew over 30 knots again. We had a heck of a time to roll it up. At last it seemed that the winds were back to normal, normal means there is a breeze starting around four in the afternoon and around 9 it peaks to about 25/30 knots for a couple of hours and by morning it’s calm again. Although we still get occasional gales out in the bay bringing us up to 30+ knots of wind and we do have to bring the shovel out again and again.

Sid’s been doing all kinds of boat projects (climbing up the mast, cleaning the rigging and polishing the mast), replacing the new membrane, while I was sewing up a storm again, this time cloths and new mosquito netting. Bamboo’s spinnaker exploded on their trip to Santa Marta so one afternoon we all met at the parking lot with a drink in one hand and scissors in the other and we cut the spinnaker apart. I made some fun laundry bags out of the material.

The aluminum boom of the main looked pretty corroded it was time to paint it. Sid sanded it down to a smooth finish then we took off into town to find the right paint. Thanks to Tim and Elena from Tim’s Café we found an area in town which has nothing but hardware stores and were able to find a store that had the type paint we needed and they even matched the color perfectly. The customer standing next to us a painter offered to paint it for us. A couple of hours later he came to pick up our 10 foot boom on his motorcycle. Yeah, that’s what we thought, so we ended up walking it to his shop which is behind a car wash on the sidewalk in front of his house. Two hours later it was finished and we picked it up again. Sid was so impressed the next morning he brought the staysail boom to him which he again painted the same day, cost including paint 120 dollars. You should have seen us walking the streets with these 10 foot long things especially crossing intersection. As I said the horny drivers speed up when they see pedestrians.

Tim (Canadian) and Elane (Colombiana) have a Café just around the corner from the marina and started their business 2 months ago. They are wonderful people and very accommodating to us. Friday nights they invite us for Happy Hours, Beer and their wonderful Crepes at half price and Tim always brings a box or two of Colombian cigars out for us to enjoy. I tell you for 15 cent cigars they are a good competition to any cut Havana. Elena overheard us girls talking about doing yoga on the dock and offered the use of an upstairs room and so began our twice a week yoga lessons at 7Am at Tim’s. After yoga Elena teaches us Colombian dances which is always a lot of fun. We gringos just can’t wiggle our butts as the Latinos can, that’s for sure.

It was time to get out of the marina and visit a new place and Taganga sounded good. It turned into a girls-out as all the boys had projects on the boat they didn’t want to drop. Susan (Maggie May), Debi (Wind Shear), Mariah (Sandial) and I took a taxi to Taganga which is just around the corner from the marina about a 5 minute dinghy ride or 20 minute taxi drive on curvy roads over a hill. The view from the top of the hill down to Taganga is breathtaking.

Fernando the taxi driver told us that this bay used to be THE marihuana trafficking place in Colombia. Boats were lined up to wait for a shipment. The town is a hippy town now and filled with European backpackers. Without the  tourism Taganga is a small fishing village, the beach is lined with colorful fishing boats and it is fun to watch the little town boys play with the fishing nets pretending they are fishermen.

There is a beautiful hike up the north side of the bay which goes over to the next beach Playa Grande with an even more so breathtaking view. The water there is crystal clear. 

Mariah

Playa Grande

 Although tempted to walk down to this beautiful beach the thought of having to climb that hill back made us decided to return to Taganga instead. There we found a nice restaurant and enjoyed a wonderful meal with many beers and in no time it was time to head home as Fernando our Taxi driver returned to pick us up. We all had a wonderful time.

Wind Shear, Maggie May and Paradise planned an overnight trip to Minca. Unfortunately Debi had a family emergency and flew home immediately so only Susanne and Andy joined us but this story you will have to read in the next posting…………