Santa Marta - Days 12-13
Time to go to the next coastal town – Santa Marta! Should be a short (by Colombian standards) 4 hour bus ride. Add in some construction delays and multiple bathroom/snack breaks and we finally get to our hostel in Santa Marta ~6 hours later. But we didn’t have anything planned and the bus was comfortable, so we enjoyed the beautiful scenery as we traveled along the coast.
Our hostel in Santa Marta – The Dreamer – was great, probably one of the coolest hostels I’ve stayed in. All of the rooms surrounded a nice courtyard complete with pools (both swimming and billiards), bar, kitchen, and plenty of places to lounge. And lets not forget the mango trees that frequently and violently drop ripened fruit onto the heads of unsuspecting guests. They sure are tasty though! What a luxury to forage a perfectly ripe mango from the ground right outside your door.
After a bit of lounging, and of course, cribbage, we decide to head out to a grocery store near by so that we can cook our own dinner. While we’ve had some delicious food in our two weeks here in Colombia, the cuisine always pretty much the same: a meat, a starch, another starch, maybe another starch if it’s a fancy place. So I was craving some fresh, tasty vegetables. As this was the first nice, big grocery store we went to, we were easily able to find plenty of ingredients to make a grilled chicken salad. Of note, this is also when we realized that Colombians keep milk stored in a room temperature one liter bag, at least until opened. Those who know Ben well know that he lives on milk (How else do you think he got so large?), but he could not get over the idea of drinking room temperature milk. So no milk in the cart this time – stay tuned, we’re here all summer and he has to crack at some point.
Its only after we take our first few bites of the tasty salad that we realize that perhaps we shouldn’t have rinsed all of the vegetables under sink water? This area doesn’t exactly have the safest drinking water. But its too late now so we continue on and cross our fingers for our bowels. Only time can tell…
End of D12 cribbage score: Ben 22 (3 skunks) – Meg 18 (4 skunks)
Phew, we made it through the night.
That next morning, we head into town to check out the little downtown area and do some more trip planning. The coffee shop that Ben was excited to check out (Café Lulo) was closed, so we wandered around and caféteria-hopped between La Canoa and Ikaro. Excellent coffee drinks, mediocre food. Our goal for trip planning this day was to figure out if and where we were going to volunteer and what to see/do in Ecuador – quite ambitious for one morning. After about 6 hours of information overload, we give up feeling overwhelmed and not having anything accomplished. Too many decisions to make! We retreat back to the hostel, but the day turns around by randomly seeing two of our Cartagena friends at the check in desk at our hostel – Sarah and Minos! Excited to see some familiar faces, we quickly get to chatting and grab some daquiris for the pool. A few hours later, a local shows up to the hostel to teach the guests how to salsa dance. Inhibitions being a bit lowered, we all (including Ben) willingly join in for the lesson. Lesson learned: salsa dancing is hard. Our American hips are made of normal bones and joints, not fluid jelly like the Colombians. Most of the group gives up after only 20ish minutes and head to the pool, but I hold out just a little longer with a new dance partner (we’ll call him “San Diego”). He was a bit better than the rest and gave us Americans a bit of hope, but he had been volunteering at The Dreamer for the past 3 weeks and has had numerous lessons. Not being able to keep up, I throw in the towel as well. Just in time for the youngins of the group to start a game of flip cup. We join in for a few games then realize that we are a little too old to keep up (only from a tolerance standpoint, we were actually still quite skilled at the game). The rest of the night flies by with some of the best sounds of the trip so far – a mix of 90s hip-hop playing overhead, lots of laughter, and plethora of lovely accents to enjoy (especially the two Irish lassies). We fall asleep easily with plans to head to Minca tomorrow with Sarah and Minos.
End of D13 cribbage score: Ben 25 (3 skunk) – Meg 18 (4 skunks)