Taganga

We arrived on the overnight bus from San Gil this morning and tucked straight into breakfast at our hostel ´La Casa de Felipe´. Fantastic breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, tea, juice, and all for $5,000 COP each.

Our room is fantastic, more like a hotel and only $30,000 COP per night, which is about $25 NZD. Great atmosphere, I could stay here for a very long time!! A really nice setting with lots of hammocks!

Santa Marta itself isn´t the most nicest place. Really dirty and dusty and pretty much makes you want to get on a bus and leave. Although after a wee siesta we hoped on a local bus into Santa Marta and wondered around. The actual beach part is quite nice, it just seems to be everywhere else that is plain ugly. We also booked our Lost City trek tour for Wednesday.

The price is seems to be set everywhere now at $460,000 COP so we went with it. It was a must and the only reason we came through Santa Marta so we have to do it! Really excited! We had just withdrew money for it - nearly 1 million COP, and some raggety teenager came up behind Nathan as we left the ATM and said something and tried to pull on his shirt. I just said ¨No! No por favor, NO!¨ - terrified of being robbed!! It was all good though in the end.

Bought some cards and started playing in the afternoon for about 4hrs! Don´t know if we mentioned it but Frenchie AKA Thomas who we travelled up with from San Gil is also staying here, also doing the tour on the same days but with a different group and then going to Tayrona the same time as us. Bizarre, he´s good value though and we hung out last night with him and got talking with a guy from Sydney and an English girl.