Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Friday 14 May
Cartagena – Santa Marta – Taganga

Today I went back to the nice part of town which I had discovered yesterday evening. It was all nicely preserved colonial architecture painted in bright colours, with exposed wooden timbers and colourful plants falling out of every available surface. Very picturesque, very beautiful. Now I understood what all the fuss is about.

And the hawkers were here in the daytime as well. Of course they’re annoying as hell so it’s best to make fun of them. Most of them ask where you are from and I like to keep them guessing. They always guess English, American or Australian first so of course I pretended I wasn’t one of those. I was actually wearing my Roots t-shirt that had a Canadian flag on it (albeit very tiny) and despite this, one guy just couldn’t guess Canadia. You can also pretend to be Welsh as well, no one had that down as one of their options. Anyway, eventually they leave.

I went for lunch at a place called Oh La La, the restaurant that I couldn’t find yesterday evening. Turns out it was very posh and just a little bit expensive. Thankfully they had awesome air conditioning, which was a relief from the midday heat. I went for one of the cheapest things on the menu. The waitress described it to me in Spanish. I didn’t understand a word she was saying unfortunately, apart from “muy rico” meaning very good, which is better than the opposite at least. It turned out to be a glorified meat pie, and very tasty.

I booked a bus to go to Santa Marta and then spent most of the day waiting for it to turn up. This wouldn’t have happened under the Nazis, goddamit! About four hours later I was on my way. This was proper Colombian time. Around about 10pm I arrived in Santa Marta and caught a cab to Taganga, which was a short, windy mountain road over some hills to the next bay. I arrived at the hostel I had booked, only to find that they didn’t have my registration. Luckily there was another hostel right next door with beds available and it happened to be the one where Etienne, Le Lambadour was staying.

I went out to get some food and have a walk around town to see the lay of the land. I don’t think I went out that evening.