Sarah's Adventures in South America

We took an expensive bus ride from Cartagena to Santa Marta, I forgot that we weren´t in cheap Ecuador anymore, this bus cost us $40.000 pesos each. That´s about $25 dollars each for a 4 hour trip. We arrived in Santa Marta which I have to admit I was not that impressed and we headed strait to Taganga.  We started driving through some pretty sketchy areas but when we pulled into Taganga it got even sketchier.  Roads were not paved and it was pretty dark everwhere. We stayed in a really nice hostel called Divanga, I recommend it for sure. In the morning I got up and when to the ¨Beach¨ with my friend we got there lied down for about 2 mintues and then decided it was the worst beach we had been too and we just couldn´t stay there.  The beach was basically rocky sand, and compared to the caribbean beach that we had just come from…it wasn´t doing it for us. Taganga is a small fisherman´s village but there really isn´t anything there. I decided to do I dive course there because it was $350 dollars to become certified one of the cheapest places that I know about! It was a great 3 day course. I went with a company called Nauticulos, they were a really great company right on the main street at the beach.  At night Taganga had pretty good parties as well, there were two bars that you could choose from (Mirador was always popular). I´m glad I was occupied with the dive course for 3 days otherwise I´m not really sure what I would have done to occupy my time there.  There are fishermen that will take you to other beaches that are nicer and 15 minutes by boat.  Tyrona park is also near Taganga and it is very popular for tourists.  My last day in Colombia we decided to go to a beach that was recommened to one of my friends that we were traveling with. Palmino was the name of the town that we went to.  We got on a bus in Santa Marta, which is only 10 min. away from Taganga and headed to this beautiful beach.  The bus started driving and after about 15 mintues the money collector came and told us it was $8000 pesos each! We asked him why it was so much, and then I asked him how far away it was, he said it was an hour and a half! We were thinking it was going to be a 15 mintue journey…it wasn´t.  We then got dropped off in this tiny village.  As soon as we got off the bus we had guys in motorcycles coming up to us asking if we wanted rides to the beach.  We asked how long it was to walk and they told us 20 min.  The motorcycles were cheap they were only charging us $2000 each, so we got on and they dropped us off, they were nice enough to tell us that they could come back when we wanted because there was nobody on the beach! So they came back promptly at 5pm to pick us all up.  The beach was really nice and I didn´t mind the scenic hour and a half ride. 

Colombia was great and I´m sad that I wasn´t there longer, I will miss it for sure!