Taganga / Santa Marta Colombia part 2

How's everyone doing? I promised you guys some pics so here they are. Plus, I have a lot of catching up to do. We've been moving fiercely thru Colombia and having a blast. But before we get into all that. I'm so excited to let everyone know that people are reading my blog. I'm not talking about our family and friends but folks that are doing some research on traveling to the areas we're traveling. They are finding my blog on the internet and prompting questions. I love it. With that being said, here's my disclaimer. I'm not a professional writer. In fact, I blog late at night and more than likely have had a few cocktails. My intent here was to keep my family & friends informed of our whereabouts and post pictures. So, please don't criticize my grammar or writing techniques. Now, if anyone has questions about the places to stay, things to do, traveling information between cities....I'll be more than happy to help out. I had blogged about Taganga and Santa Marta previously but here are some pictures. And since we do have some folks interested in traveling I'll try to be a little more detailed. I think its so cool others are reading this. We traveled to Taganga from Cartagena via Mar Sol. Mar Sol didn't have a great website but we learned about them while in Cartagena. Most of the travel agents have their number and can set anyone up for door pickup. They use a 15 passenger van with A/C and very comfortable. Would highly recommend for shorter trips (less than 4 hours). Taganga was a small fishing village. We spent 5 days in this town and I'd say that was 3 days too long. Don't misunderstand; it was nice but we're a little older and would have like a little more to do. The crowd was a young "backpackers/hippie" party folks. It was safe and we had no problems to mentions. Always a good thing. There were 2 "hotels" and tons of "hostels". The hostels I can recommend are La Holanda, Bayview and Moramar but there are tons more to chose from. In the early evening all the boats were back on shore from the day of fishing. Each evening we would walk down to the beach for dinner and check out the entertainment. The flame throwers grew quite the crowd.

We did take a small boat around the cove to North Beach. We could have hiked but we chose to take the boat. I should say I chose to boat it. Billy Goat Bob would have preferred to hike. North beach was lined with small restaurants, lots of vendors walked up and down the beach and plenty of beach chairs to rent. We really enjoyed our afternoon here.

This is the beach access road. The beach would be on the left while most of the restaurants were on the right side.

Santa Marta. Now I would have enjoyed a few more days here. Santa Marta is quite a bit larger than Taganga and not a "tourist" area. They have beautiful beaches, casinos, malls, and mercados. We used the local bus and taxis to get around without problems. The only place we can recommend since we stayed here is Las Brisas Locas. It's located in the heart of el centro and 2 blocks from the beach. The brothers that own the place just opened up and still have a little construction going on but we enjoyed our stay and meeting them.

What I can't believe is that we took zero pictures in Santa Marta. What? Bob my photographer failed miserably. I'll get on to him about that. The pictures we do have were taken in Rodadero which is just outside of Santa Marta. We took the local bus and hung out for the day. This is an area of high rise condos and hotels. It was beautiful.

The beach was lined with Carpas "tent" and sillas "chairs" for rent.

All those high rises you see in the background are rooms available for daily rentals. One thing we learned in Colombia...If you plan to stay longer than 3 days; check out the apartments. They normally rent out cheaper than a hotel and have a lot more room to spread out in.

Tons of paddle boats available for rental too.

How is this for creativity? This was the cocktail cart. I loved it. Have your drink served up in a fresh coconut.

It was a little bit cloudy but we still enjoyed the sunset.

Hope you enjoyed!

Much love - B&B