The Coast

We arrived in Cartagena to a shock of blazing heat. It’s literally worse than Chicago in the middle of August, and that’s saying something. We checked into Hostel Viajero and explored a bit. Cartagena was once a strategic port city for the Spanish on the Caribbean coast. All the gold “procured” from the Incas in Peru and Bolivia was moved upwards overland thru South America and into Cartagena. When it got to Cartagena, it was moved onto ships and carted off to Spain. Because of this, it was a major spot for people like Francis Drake and other government sponsored pirates from competing nations to sack. After getting screwed one too many times, the Spanish surrounded the city with a giant wall and had enormous cannons outfitted every 50 meters or so. It became pretty impenetrable and is impressive to look at even now. The city has preserved the walls and cannons so it’s cool to walk around and imagine what Cartagena must’ve looked like 250 years ago. However, we wanted to get to Tayrona National Park ASAP which was further east along the coast so left after one day. I’ll be coming back anyway on my way back towards Panama so can explore then.

We had a shuttle pick us up at the hostel in Cartagena and take us to Taganga which is kind of a port of entry for Tayrona Park. Once arriving in Santa Marta (the main city that Taganga is outside of) the shuttle driver all of a sudden made us get out and get our bags. When protesting that we were supposed to be going all the way to Taganga, he said that he couldn’t find any gas so that he couldn’t go that far. He hailed us a cab, hustled us inside it and had a guy take us the rest of the way to Taganga. Taganga was described as a small fishing village with pristine beaches… this wasn’t exactly the case. We ended up staying in Casa de Felipe which was one of the coolest hostels I’ve been in yet in S.A. However, Taganga…has kind of changed apparently. It’s dirty, full of gringos and the beach is an ecologist’s nightmare…super expensive too. We’ll be setting up shop here for a few days but then going to Tayrona later to experience what we really came here for. More to follow.