Santa Marta and the Sierra Nevada

Santa Marta was one of the first cities that Europeans founded in South America. As such, it has a rich and interesting colonial architecture. What’s peculiar is that the historic center is a checkered assortment of lovely streets with well-maintained old buildings haphazardly interspersed with run-down and less inviting blocks. In the Calle de los Novios we found our favorite watering hole: a small shop that sold refreshing kombucha and vegan ice cream. The flavors we ordered were almost invariably lulo for the former and chocolate for the latter.

Santa Marta serves as a hub to explore the Departamento del Magdalena, and as such touristic services abound. You will be offered all sorts of gastronomical or sightseeing experiences as you wander around the city center. There’s also a large number of Venezuelans trying to make a living here. Many offer intricate paper crafts made out of worthless Venezuelan bills, in denominations that show a large number of zeros on the right. They show their amazing designs on the street on a tarp framed by “bricks” that are just large piles of bills that looked right out of the press. It’s a surreal and disheartening sight.

The Santa Marta Marina is modern and conveniently located, but our stay wasn’t the most pleasant we’ve had in a marina. The heat, the dry spell, the lack of potable water (and sometimes the lack of even non-potable water), the mosquitoes at night, the noise, and a fine black dust that turned every white surface into an ugly gray color, all contributed to us wanting to spend time elsewhere. Which led us to…

Minca

Minca is a small backpacker’s town that serves as a gateway to explore the beautiful Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. There’s a hippie/new age vibe everywhere. If you ever find yourself there, you have to try the chocolate bread at the french bakery. It’s just out of this world.

The Sierra Nevada is the world’s second highest coastal range. An interesting piece of trivia is that after Mount Everest, Aconcagua, Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley), and Kilimanjaro, all iconic peaks, comes… the ignoble Pico Cristóbal Colón in the Sierra Nevada for a particular metric I just learnt about: prominence, which is the height of a mountain’s summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it. Fascinating, isn’t it?

From Minca you can walk an hour or two, or hire a moto-taxi or a 4WD taxi to get higher up in the sierra through rough dirt roads to any of a multitude of lodges. We used all three modes of transportation: we first walked to La Frecuencia permaculture lodge, then took a moto-taxi (one for each of us, that is) to La Victoria historic coffee plantation, then hiked a steep path to Casas Viejas, then shared a 4WD taxi down to Minca, all in the course of several days. The time we spent in that breathtakingly green and peaceful place, enjoying spectacular views, healthy meals and nature’s sounds was a reinvigorating and much-needed break from life at sea level.

We have marked the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta as one of the places we want to come back to.

Toilets with a view seem to be the way to go in the Sierra Nevada

Parque Nacional Tayrona

The Tayrona National Park, about half an hour from Santa Marta, is a beautiful park situated between the Caribbean Sea and the foot of the Sierra Nevada. You can hike trails that alternate between the beach and the jungle, while observing its rich wildlife that includes more than 300 species of birds and 100 species of mammals (the most alluring being the monkeys—howling, capuchin and the endemic cotton-top monkey).