My goal for visiting Santa Marta was to go to scuba diving. I had read about how Taganga, the adjoining town, is one of the least expensive places to get certified to scuba dive in the world. The fun dives were equally inexpensive. However, one thing I did not consider was that I would be diving with a bunch of new divers.
I met one of the diving instructors and after chatting with her for a while I decided to save my money and try to dive elsewhere, hopefully San Andrés. My deciding factor was new divers usually need a lot of attention and go through their air pretty quickly; I should know I was one at one point. Most of the operations were pretty small so there would probably only be one dive master and we probably wouldn’t have as much time at the bottom to explore as I’d hoped.
The city does have several beaches, but I wanted to do something more active. I’m so white I’d just burn anyway, and I didn’t feel a shade of red looked good on me this early in the trip. The city does have a few beautiful parks, and the view from the coastline was nice if you enjoyed a container ship and port as part of that view.
Santa Marta was more sketchy than Cartagena. When you’re white and you travel in Latin America you get used to people offering to sell you drugs over and over and over, but this was the first time the guy wouldn’t take no for an answer and he followed Aida and I down the street a bit, which was a little worrying. I avoided that area in the evenings for the rest of my stay.
The last day I ended up going to go a hike in Tayrona National Park. I met Francisco, who was visiting from Neiva, another city in Colombia, and he decided to join me for the hike. The park and it’s beaches were unbelievably beautiful. I wish would have had more time or even opted to camp or sleep in one of the hammocks for a night if I wasn’t leaving to fly to Bogotá the next day. My clothes were drenched at the end of that hike from sweating in all that heat and humidity, but it was well worth it!
More pictures here: Santa Marta and Tayrona National Park
Michael's Journey 