Taganga - Part II

Day 1 – Cashpoint says No!

We got up showered and packed before grabbing some breakfast at the hostel.   Once fed we headed down the dusty lane and waited for a public bus to come along.  It wasn’t long before one turned up and we boarded and waited for it to set off and take us back to Santa Marta.

 

The bus ride was a hot and sweaty 3 hour ride and getting off at Santa Marta we wandered around for a bit before hailing down a cab for the short drive to Taganga.

Back at Taganga we headed back to our old hostel and checked back in, unfortunately it appeared we had been downgraded and we were in a pokey and roasting hot little room with a tiny corridor for a bathroom.

 

Once again unpacked and now early afternoon we headed to the communal area to do a bit of travel research, get some cooler air and book a flight.  We had intended on going snorkelling but the flight website was screwing around and it pretty much took all afternoon to sort out the flights we wanted.

It was not turning out to be a very good day as when we finally ventured out and went to get some cash from the town’s only cashpoint, it wasn’t playing ball.  As we had all the next day in Taganga with very little money we decided we would have to go back to Santa Marta to get some cash.  An Australian guy named Michael was also in the same predicament so he agreed to share a cab with us.

The taxi ride once again was quick and we both managed to get the cash out that we needed.  Whilst we were there we walked around the shops to find some elusive filters that Shell was after, we eventually found some (very expensive, a packet of ciggies is cheaper) and then caught a cab back to Taganga.

After such a rubbish day we headed to find a bar near the beach and Michael joined us.  So the rest of the night was spent drinking and chatting about our travels.  Michael amazingly had recently been to the no-go country of Venezuela and had some interesting stories about it.

 

We said our goodbyes to Michael but weren’t quite ready to go to bed so we picked up some beers at a nearby shop and took them back to the hostel.  We stayed up fairly late for us, reading some more serial killer stories to each other whilst we drank our beers.

Day 2 – Lazy Day

Surprisingly after quite a late night we were up at a decent hour and went and made some breakfast, pancakes and fried eggs!, strangely it worked, and was much better than the over sweetened bread you get here. As we were not due to catch out night bus until 10pm we made the decision to extend our room for the day so we didn’t have to pack and could take showers later in the day.

It was very hot today so we just loitered around the hostel for a big part of the day, once again catching up on some blogging and doing some travel research.

Later in the afternoon when it started cooling down we headed for the beach where we were going to catch up on the dip and snorkelling that we missed the previous day.  Donning our masks and snorkels we headed into the water and headed towards the rocks on the left hand of the bay.  However, what struck us that this beautiful bay wasn’t as clean as we thought, snorkelling towards the rocks was very murky and the sea bed was littered with beer bottles/cans and other types of rubbish.

When we reached the rocky area the situation had not improved as we had hoped.  We snorkelled around there for a bit but it was still dirty looking and the fish that we could see were not that pretty or interesting. 

Feeling a bit deflated by this we decided to head back to shore, dry off for a bit and then get a beer from our local beach bar.  We only had the one as we had to sort ourselves out for the upcoming night bus.

 

We headed back to the hostel where we took showers and packed our bags before going out to get something to eat.  As we wanted a good meal we headed to the restaurant we had been to before which was pretty decent, this time we both went for the chicken & beef skewers (I ordered two as I was feeling pretty peckish).    

Whilst we were sat there we were once more impressed how the South American’s look after their stray dogs, a guy coming out with dry dog food and feeding them all on the street.  Also, there was suddenly some lively band music coming down the street, which as it approached turned out to be a very mini-carnival.  However, we like to believe it was put on for us as we were leaving town.

 

Once we had our fill we then collected our bags from the hostel and headed to the main road where we quickly hailed down a taxi to take us to the bus station in Santa Marta. 

Arriving at the bus station we picked up our tickets, found the bus and boarded.  Columbian buses are not as good as some we have travelled in and this bus only had semi-cama (reclines a bit) so we were going to be in for a long night.