I Don´t Believe in Santa Marta

Santa Marta couldn't be more different from Parque Tayrona. A dry, dusty, frantic town, the streets buzz with vendors selling a seemingly endless assortment of random stuff – clothes, tools, strange food oddities, sunglasses, light bulbs; the list could go on forever. Several guys were just selling a pile of random old remote controls for TVs. Motorcycles dart through the streets, chaotically passing horse-drawn wagons and minivan buses that look like the one the terrorists drove in the first Back to the Future.

There is a McDonalds, though.



We stayed in a hotel a block from the unremarkable beach, but our room had A/C and a TV so it served its purpose. At this point in the trip, we definitely have established a rhythm in terms of where we stay and what we do with our time, alternating between party cities (Bucaramanga), outdoor fun (Parque Tayrona), and places to take care of necessities like laundry, calling the family, etc (Santa Marta).

We stayed a couple nights, doing some shopping at the mall and getting our ducks in a row before heading to Cartagena.